Energy harvesting transmitters may go on forever 01 August 2012

Energy harvesting technology from ABB is enabling speciality chemicals manufacturer Robinson Brothers to monitor temperature remotely without a power supply to the transmitter.

E&I manager Tom Rutter explains that he has been trialling the transmitter on the plant's steam main, and that, with WirelessHART remote fieldbus communications as well, the instrument has been installed without any cabling at all.

"The transmitter has been operating for about three months now and it's ticking all the boxes, without drawing any power from its back-up battery," says Rutter.
"It looks like it could go on forever, provided there's steam flowing through the line," he adds.

The system was installed by ICA Services, which suggested exploring energy harvesting as a way of eliminating cabling costs – which typically account for 50% of the device – in future instrumentation schemes at the West Midlands plant.

The ABB transmitter is powered by an on-board micro-thermoelectric generator (micro-TEG), driven by the temperature difference between the steam pipe and its surroundings.

ABB says that the micro-TEGs used in its WirelessHART temperature transmitters provide a robust and compact solution for energy harvesting from either hot or cold processes.

And with many industrial processes having an abundance of heat, the power that can be delivered by micro-TEGs is sufficient to operate wireless sensors in a variety of locations.

The system at Robinson Brothers needs a minimum temperature difference of 30°C, which is easily achieved in this application where the steam flows at around 106°C while ambient air is typically 26°C.

ICA Services engineers set up the transmitter to send data wirelessly to a remote wireless gateway, which feeds the signal into the site's existing Ethernet network and then to an ABB SM500F data recorder.

"I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be using the energy harvesting technology again, after such a successful trial," comments Rutter.

"We've already got over 10,000 measurement points around the site, but we don't have much wireless technology," he continues.

"It's something we'll be looking to do more of in future projects, because there are terrific cabling costs involved in installing conventional instrumentation and the potential savings are obvious."

Brian Tinham

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