Signal conditioner helps out old power stations
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Status Instruments product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Sep 29, 2004
A small, yet vital, piece of instrumentation from Status Instruments is helping Cardiff based Insteng Process Automation keep Britain's coal fired power stations operational.
A small, yet vital, piece of instrumentation from Status Instruments is helping Cardiff based Insteng Process Automation keep Britain's coal fired power stations operational.
It is widely recognised that the coal fired power stations are on the decline with a limited life span and many of the products within the control systems are becoming unavailable, primarily as a result of reliance on old technology and changing legislation such as ATEX.
Insteng has developed a range of products, including its ISCEP (Insteng signal convertor electro to pneumatic), which offers a modern solid-state replacement for existing and aging electromechanical units.
As Insteng's Gareth Burris explains: "We realised that the power stations were struggling to find replacement controllers".
"The ISCEP offers a dedicated solution to time proportional pulse to pneumatic conversion, with resolutions of 1 part in 400 and 1 part in 2000".
"The front end of the unit is based on the Status Instruments Medacs unit, which converts the pulse stream to an analogue value".
"This signal then produces a pneumatic signal using 'solid-state' pneumatic relays in a closed loop generation system".
"The convertor delivers a linear 3-15lb/in2(g) output, which is fail freeze in case of signal or power supply failure".
The Medacs modular expandable data acquisition and control systems series represents a revolutionary concept in signal conditioning modules, offering a high degree of functionality and configurability, together with the capability of interfacing to a wide range of industrial sensors.
In order to increase the flexibility of the Medacs modules, Status has pioneered the development of a proprietary software module known as TFML, which is embedded in each unit.
TFML offers the capability of inserting a transfer function between the input and output to provide a special control function.
This gives customers the ability to configure the units to accommodate unusual or custom applications directly within the signal conditioning module.
(By comparison, a conventional signal conditioner connects to a sensor and measures the sensor parameter, converting this to an industry standard output such as 4-20mA).
Units can handle standard millivolt, milliamp, temperature and frequency inputs and have, in addition, two isolated discrete digital inputs that can be used as to provide a reset function or any other function via TFML.
Outputs include an isolated 4-20mA retransmission signal, a single change-over trip relay and dual normally open relays.
As Burris concludes: "The flexibility of Medacs has helped us to rapidly develop a cost effective solution for the existing controllers".
"Our convertor acts as an interface between the existing control system and the many power cylinders operating in the stations".
"At large power stations there can be several hundred such cylinders and being able to find a practical, cost effective solution to help keep them operational is being well received by the engineers".
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