Monitoring Metal Recycling
A British company is using a rotary kiln incinerator to recycle silver from waste material. Part of the process includes "cleaning" waste gases, and they have a legal requirement to maintain records to prove emissions don't exceed current limits. To achieve this they are using Windmill software, which provides the flexibility and control they need.
Using a personal computer and Windmill, the system monitors many variables including temperatures, pressures and speed of kiln rotation. It gathers data from several manufacturers' controllers and instruments, logging data from all sources to one file. The data is stored and can be accessed from the archive at any time. Real-time charting and process mimic displays complete the system, giving control options as well as historic data.
Distributed Measurements
The controlling PC has to be kept away from the incinerators and is located in an office 50 metres distant. The sensors, controllers and instruments are 20 to 30 meters apart.
Flexible Data Logging
The data logging software, called Windmill Logger, is extremely flexible. It can automatically create new files at given intervals, every day or every week for example. Several loggers can run simultaneously. This allows logging from different rigs to be started and stopped independently, or for several sets of channels to be logged at different rates. Each set of data is time and date stamped.
Try Windmill for yourself: subscribe to our newsletter and download a trial version of Windmill complete with a generic serial instrument driver.
For other applications see our Contents.
