Paperless recorders are not new, the first examples being introduced into the market over 20 years ago by Penny & Giles (now TrendView Recorders), however, with the ever-increasing demands for long-term archiving this product is finding more and more applications in industry.
The traditional function of circular or strip-chart recorders was to provide information for historical or legislative requirements, eg pasteurising temperatures in food processing. The down-side of this generation was the cost of consumables such as charts, pens and ink, apart from maintenance considerations. Other issues existed in the form of number of channels available, trending capability and chart speed limitations.
As an example, in a typical process installation, a paper recorder will trend at 20 mm/h with a 32 m strip chart lasting approximately two months. An equivalent 16-channel paperless recorder with a super floppy disk, recording at the same rate, will last about 10 years. Looked at another way this means that a single super floppy is equivalent to 60 rolls of chart paper. PC card interface is also available which allows the use of solid-state 'flash' storage of up to 64 MB or Type 111 hard drive giving up to 1 GB of retrievable media. This enables the paperless recorder to handle vast amounts of information.
Another benefit of this electronic storage technology is an improvement in the way information is stored. This is achieved by realtime compression of the intelligent logging. With this method, logging rates as presently understood no longer exist. The recorder simply adapts the logging rate in realtime to store only the information which is really required. If inputs are stable, logged points are far apart. With fast changes, the logging rate will adapt to capture the trend in detail - automatically. This feature can be extremely beneficial when trying to analyse any process 'anomaly'.
Electronically stored data can be archived and copied with total security, quickly and easily with no degradation. The data can be exported to other applications such as spreadsheets and wordprocessors for further analysis and review. One other benefit is the ability to e-mail data and configuration information. A good example to illustrate this point is where an installation of 50 recorders was simulated by the manufacturer, configuration completed, transmitted by e-mail to the overseas site, copied onto disk and downloaded into each recorder with the minimum of time and effort.
With the continuing development of paperless recorders the available market has now been greatly expanded, even to the extent of encroaching into laboratory plus test and measurement applications.
Continuing development of paperless recorders will extend their capabilities offering faster logging rates, more channels and greater storage capacity. In the short term advances include web and e-mail support using Ethernet connectivity, thus allowing simple integration into existing networks.
In today's age of information and communication, keeping process technologies up to date is paramount. The drive for increased productivity and improvement in quality, through process optimisation, can only be realised by having more information. These demands can be addressed by the enhanced capabilities of the paperless recorder whilst at the same time reducing the total cost of ownership.
For more information on TrendView paperless recorders, contact Krohne.
| Tel: | +27 11 314 1391 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.za.krohne.com |
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