TelGas™ Controls for Alkane Energy PLC
TelGas™ Controls on Alkane’s Coal Mine Methane Sites – Alkane operates a number methane plants which extract gas from disused coal mines, providing an energy source for industrial applications. The gas is trapped in underground voids caused by the mining of coal. Coal mine methane may either be used in a heating process or fed to one or more generator sets, powering gas engines and driving alternator sets which produce electricity. TelGas™ Controls provide a complete solution for the control of the plants from low level local plant controls of safety interlocks and closed loop pump controls to remote supervisory control of generator sets via TelGas™ SCADA.
Special Client Requirements
- Automatic Plant control of gas on demand
- HMI for mimic displays and changing plant parameters
- Hazardous area connection bay utilising galvanically isolated barriers
- High MTBF on pump control system
- Pump duty cycling for even wear
- Remote plant monitoring
- Remote control of generator Sets
Introduction
Gas is pumped from the mine via a series of valves and gas pumps, controlled by the TelGas™ control system.
The primary requirement of the control system is to supply the gas continuously at constant pressure regardless of the flow rate. The control system must also meter the gas consumed and provide a local mimic display of plant operation on a HMI (human machine interface). The operator may also alter password protected control parameters and alarm thresholds via the HMI. The control systems are equipped with TelGas™ SCADA which records plant operation and events on a remote server and provides supervisory control of generator sets at Alkane’s offices.
Detail
The TelGas™ control system software monitors and controls separate areas of plant operation.
- Environment
- Pipeline
- Pumps
- Plant supervision
Environment
TelGas™ controls must monitor critical environmental (atmosphere) gases within and around the plant. TelGas™ monitors both CH4 and Co. CH4 monitoring checks that there are no leaks within the system while Co is a product of combustion and thus indicates the presence of smoke or fire. If either of these gases is detected and found to be outside the safe operating range then TelGas™ forces the plant to shut down. Similarly, the plant is not permitted to start if any of these environmental sensors records an out of range reading.
Pipeline
The control system continuously monitors the status of all actuated and manual valves checking that the appropriate gas routes are either open or closed depending on the operating status of the plant. In the event that the gas route is not proved correctly, the plant is shut down and all pumps and fans are stopped.
Pumps
This section of the control system deals with pump management and determines how many gas pumps are required to meet the consumer flow rate. The control program must also be ready to respond rapidly in the event of a gas pump failure. The software must quickly call in a back up pump so that there is no disruption to consumer supply. The control program also attempts to run each pump for the same number of hours so that all pumps get even wear.
TelGas™ SCADA for Alkane Energy PLC
Plant Supervision
This is the supervisory part of the program which co-ordinates the other control elements and ensures the plant is running correctly. This section checks that environmental, pipeline and pumps are all safe and serviceable before allowing the plant to run. This module also regulates the gas delivery pressure so that it remains constant, regardless of flow rate to the consumer.
The Alkane TelGas™ SCADA system connects a network of Alkane sites to the company’s offices and provides a secure Telgas database server as a central resource on Formac’s premises. Data is captured from each site periodically and saved to the server. Archive data can be accessed at any time from within Alkane’s offices or accessed remotely via a laptop PC from any Internet connection.
TelGas™ Genset Control Screen
Special Client Requirements
- Multi-site live mimic view
- On site data and alarm capture
- Alert mobile personnel by SMS message
- Remote secure data storage by Formac
- Live site data on remote mimic displays
- Replay archive site data on mimic display
- Remote analysis of plant performance using integrated graphing and spreadsheet functions
- Web browser interface for management information
- Remote control of generator plant.
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