Efficient Plant March 2020 - 26

feature | solution focus

Connecting PLCs to
battery-powered wireless
tranceivers using a robust,
long-range radio link could
reduce hardware, installation, and management
costs.

tion. Lime is used as the reagent for pH control.
At the company's Nevada mine, lime storage,
mixing, and dosing activities are controlled by a local
PLC. The lime silo and the PLC are entirely disconnected from the administration building, located on
the other side of a 300-ft.-high heap leach. Besides
making Ethernet cabling impossible, the heap leach
hinders effective implementation of conventional
wireless solutions by blocking direct radio link.
The lack of connectivity left a visibility gap. Operators failed to obtain accurate information on actual
lime dispensing rates, and the only way to know the
current silo level was to drive to the site three to four
times a day for manual data logging.

PLUG-AND-PLAY IIOT
The challenge was to find a communication solution
that could be easily and non-invasively retrofitted
into the brownfield PLC and provide reliable data
transmission over the heap leach to reach the
administration building. The company turned to
BehrTech (Behr Technologies, Toronto, behrtech.
com) and Majik Systems' (Kitchener, Ontario,
majik.io) for a joint solution. The solution uses BehrTech's MYTHINGS, a wireless connectivity platform
using TS-UNB (MIOTY) low-power, wide-area-network (LPWAN) technology, and the Majik software
suite for PLC data acquisition.
An integration gateway, running the software,
connects with the brownfield PLC using onboard
serial or Ethernet ports and derives critical data
points. A MYTHINGS transceiver, connected with
the integration gateway, transfers the data to a base
station. Data is relayed to a backend-server of the
user's choice, on premises or in the cloud, providing

| EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

EP2003fsolfocus.indd 26

flexibility and control in operational data storage and
management.
Several factors sold the company on this solution.
It's plug-and-play and does not entail complex,
error-prone hardware changes or PLC reprogramming. With ETSI-certified TS-UNB technology at its
core, the MYTHINGS platform was expected to provide robust, long-range data transmission that works
around a large physical obstruction. One-way data
transfer, from the PLC to external systems, ensures
the security of automation networks, as attempts to
remotely control machines through reverse communication aren't possible.
A pilot installation was conducted to test the solution at the Nevada site. Selected PLC tags, including
silo level, scale total weight, and lime dosing counts/
hour, were transmitted every 5 min. to a MYTHINGS base station. The station was located inside the
administration building. Data was then forwarded to
a central PLC that visualizes current mining processes and a cloud platform for predictive analytics.
Upon installation, the mining company could
derive and transfer PLC data into its backend for
visualization with no message errors observed.
Having real-time information on the lime silo level
at hand, refills were accurately planned to avoid
production delays and over ordering. On-site inspections could be eliminated.
PLCs are used in almost, if not every, industry.
Having legacy PLCs connected to battery-powered
wireless transceivers from where data is transmitted
using a robust, long-range radio link could reduce
hardware, installation, and management costs. EP
For more information, contact behrtech.com.

MARCH 2020

2/17/20 11:43 AM

http://www.majik.io http://www.behrtech.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Efficient Plant March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant March 2020