Ewon remote monitoring solution gives Aquasome full control of chemical water treatment processes 24/7.
Chemical treatment of industrial water is a process that is often operating every minute of every day. Thus, it can be challenging to keep a constant eye on the processes to make sure nothing goes wrong.
The people at Aquasome in the Czech Republic know this very well. These specialists in chemical treatment of industrial water have found a smart way to monitor their processes 24/7.
Their new remote access solution, built by Czech SCADA experts Microsys, uses Ewon remote solutions to gather data from the water treatment equipment and send it to their PROMOTIC SCADA system for monitoring and analysis.
NO MORE DATA LOSS
Aquasome was previously using industrial PCs which were getting expensive but more importantly, they had no local data buffer causing data loss if GSM communication failed. Also, it was hard to extend the system to new locations or customers.
Other drawbacks were that there was no way to service or program local units remotely, and it was also difficult to create user-defined reports.
So when Aquasome turned to Microsys for a more efficient remote monitoring solution, they agreed to skip the Industrial PCs and use Ewon Flexy as an IIoT gateway instead.
The Ewon Flexy is able to gather data from the chemical controllers in the plant and send this data via 3G to the PROMOTIC SCADA system for display and analysis.
VISUALIZATION ON A COMPUTER OR SMARTPHONE
The new PROMOTIC SCADA application is running on a virtual server together with the SQL database. The web-based visualization can be easily accessed via a computer or smartphone giving full management access for Aquasome technicians. Customers can also be granted limited access to view certain parts of the processes.
A POWERFUL COMBINATION
Microsys were first introduced to the Ewon remote solutions by the Slovak distributor of HMS products, ControlSystem sro, and is today an avid promotor of the remote access technology.
David Kubný, Sales Manager at Microsys explains that the combination of Ewon cloud data access and PROMOTIC SCADA created a very strong solution.
“The Ewon solution and the PROMOTIC SCADA, running on a virtual computer, allowed Aquasome to avoid purchasing and maintaining a PC/server. This was crucial for them. They said: ‘We are water chemistry specialists, not IT guys. We do not want to take care of any computer hardware or software. We just want it to work.‘“
David Kubný continues: ”The combination of PROMOTIC SCADA and the Ewon solutions has allowed us to build a system that is robust, reliable and easily expandable based on the needs of the customer.”
HOW IT WORKS
The Ewon Flexy routers are configured to communicate with two customized AquaSure controllers from Aquasome. Each Flexy collects data from the controllers via Modbus and stores it in the Flexy’s local memory. Every fifteen minutes the Flexy connects via 3G to the Ewon DataMailbox (a server that stores data temporarily, within the architecture of TalK2M cloud) and synchronizes the fresh data.
After that, the PROMOTIC SCADA grabs this data from the Talk2M DataMailbox and updates its own data base. Each Flexy is also used as communication gateway for sending alarm emails from the chemical treatment units if values reach certain thresholds.
Furthermore, the Ewon Flexy routers also provide a remote access tunnel to the controllers via the free VPN service eCatcher. This allows Aquasome to program and troubleshoot their equipment remotely.
