Brewing beer with flexible scada
August 2005
SCADA/HMI
The brewing of sorghum beer is a far more delicate process than imagined by the end user of the product. So, when United National Breweries of Durban decided to upgrade the automation of its brew house, silos and materials handling facility, a high premium was placed on quality and reliability. The choice fell on Silicon Systems as the system integrator offering Modicon Micro PLCs with FactoryLink scada in a dual redundant configuration.
Seamless integration between hardware and software was accomplished by using the OPC Factory Server drivers. This simplified the engineering with respect to the communications between the PLCs and FactoryLink. The repetitive nature of the work, (44 cooker tanks, etc), meant making good use of the 'branching' feature - this made FactoryLink stand out as a suitable solution, saving engineering time and reducing the size of the application.
The quality of the final product is dependant on the amount of raw materials used, correct mixing and blending, rate of temperature increase, the duration of the cooking time and the rate of cooling. In other words, a certain recipe has to be followed. These parameters are configured, stored and easily changed in a task in FactoryLink, aptly named, 'Recipes'. The upgrade was performed in modules, which is the reasoning why multiple Modicon Micro PLCs were used instead of a Quantum.
Even during commissioning the brewery has already experienced increased productivity. Hardware faults can now be identified early by analysing trends and the possibilities of human error has been reduced. The brewery operates 24 hours a day and the dual redundant server ensures that there are no disruptions from FactoryLink. If one server fails, the backup seamlessly takes over and then relinquishes control when the problem has been eradicated. The dual redundancy feature is a standard feature with FactoryLink
Few plans are always perfect and this was no exception. Customer requirements change constantly with regards to reports, displayed data, trend pages, recipes, etc. The good news is that one of FactoryLink's features is the ability to configure and implement changes while on-line.
For more information contact Johan de Villiers, Process & Information Technologies, 012 664 6622, [email protected]
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