Condition Monitoring for radioactive waste

Introduction

This company has the brief of the government to plan, build, test and the running of final storages for radioactive waste. Final storages are installed underground in salt ground. The company built a new final storage and needs a condition monitoring for testing and running such an installation. Measured signals are fluid pressure, air pressure, void pressure, temperatures, flow and voltage.

Application / Problem

The application requires a two part solution. Measurement and data acquisition has to be done standalone underground. Visualisation and messaging has to be realized overground. According to the sensitivity of this application the measured data has to be kept on high security level. No data is allowed to get out of the company although alarming should be realized on mobile phones. .

Solution / Hardware

For this solution Delphin installed a complete electrical cabinet with TopMessage devices underground. The connection between underground measurement and overground visualisation was a Ethernet connection. In case of electrical power outage the whole cabinet has to work for more 6 hours. Data need to be saved even when connection to overground get lost. In such a case an alarm is generated and informs technicians on their mobile phones. Both systems, over- and underground are secured with a reliable UPS.

A big issue was the fact that for sending SMS the message device needs a GSM modem. Usually the GSM modem is connected with a serial interface to the message device. As the distance between underground and overground is more than 300 Meter it was necessary to find another solution. A special router was developed that is able to convert email subject heading into SMS. This device (SMS router) was then installed overground. It is able to receive emails trough Ethernet from four different sender and transfer the SMS message to four different addressees.

Through this solution alarms could be send outside the company area without sending sensitive data from the measurement.

Software: Overground a solution on ProfiSignal Klicks was realized. The customer has now the possibility to have at any time a view to online data underground without losing the time for travel underground. He has an overview over alarms and send SMS.

Additionally an automatic ASCII Export is working continuously. If an Export gets interrupted or if the connection between PC and DAQ system gets lost then the application recognizes when the last time data was exported. Then it starts on the next export trigger event at point of interruption. So no data gets lost.

Customer benefits:

• Complete measurement and ASCII export was automated
• No technician needs to go underground (>300m = 1,5 h)
• High security of data and reliable system over- and underground
• Alarms for measurement, system and connections are all generated and converted to SMS
• Each SMS can be adopted individually to an addressee
• E-Mail to SMS converter with TopMessage/DataService Configurator