Industrial Applications & Installations:
Project Type:
Mining Operation
Customer: IMC Chemicals, Trona, CA
Contractor/Installer: The Foxboro Company, San Ramon, CA & Sierra Control Systems, Carson City, NV
Equipment: 11 TeleSAFE 6000-16EX SCADA-optimized PLCs, 35 SmartWIRE controllers, 70 TeleSAFE VS/3, 2 LookoutT SCADA/MMI systems; 11 radios
When Foxboro needed a SCADA solution for IMC Chemical's Southern California mining facility, they looked at a number of products and vendors and decided that Control Microsystems' SCADA-optimized PLCs were the best overall solution for their needs. The project involves nearly 100 RTUs ranging in I/O from a handful of points to several hundred each.
The system involves the use of a master RTU which is polling 11 sub-master RTUs over a simplex radio system. The sub-master RTUs poll as few as 3 to as many as 36 direct-wired slave RTUs and act as data concentrators as well as controllers for their own I/O. Several of the slave RTUs are simple non-programmable SmartWIRET remote I/O systems; others are fully programmable units which control their own I/O. The Master RTU collects and concentrates the data from the sub-masters for transfer to the Foxboro I/A SystemT as well as two LookoutT MMI stations. This requires that this RTU act as a slave RTU on three of its four serial ports and as a master on the fourth.
The integration of the system, as well as the panel design and construction, was done by Sierra Control Systems in Carson City, NV. Since the installation was in the desert of South Central California, special consideration had to be given to the final design. A special ventilated sun shield was provided which keeps the temperature inside the enclosures to a mild 140°F or less, on those hot summer days.
Further information, which includes a video produced by Foxboro about his project, can be obtained from Sage Designs
Sierra Control Systems can be reached at 775-883-0443 or www.sierracontrols.com.
TeleSAFE, TeleSAFE Micro16, SmartWIRE, TelePACE and TeleSAFE C are trademarks of Control Microsystems Inc. Lookout is a trademark of National Instruments Corporation. Foxboro I/A System is a trademark of The Foxboro Company.
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