A critical fresh water treatment plant, Borough of Coudersport, required an upgrade to their existing Process Automation Control (PAC) System installed at their north and east plants. Their units were reliable and running great after a decade of service. However, the main processors (T940) were obsolete and Coudersport would not have been able to replace them on failure. This is a rural plant that is two hours from the closest city so without local support, reliability is a high priority. The plant could not be taken offline for more than a few hours at a time so the majority of the upgrade work was required to be done live. Eurotherm, a division of Watlow, have shown a commitment over the last four decades to continue making hardware and programming software with backwards compatibility to previous generations. Every version of their LINTools software supports EVERY previous version of EVERY hardware variety for the last 30 years – a significant advantage over some suppliers that require a version of configuration software to exactly match with the hardware version.
In this case, an upgrade was achieved by replacing the T940 processors with T2750 racks allowing for the use of the same communications backbone and existing I/O cards. Owing to the ability to ‘port’ the majority of the code directly from the T940 to the T2750 (despite them being two generations of product development apart), the engineering time was reduced by around 70%. Since the existing I/O was retained, installation costs were reduced by 90% since no new wiring or loop checks were required. Additionally, drawing changes were minimized and because significant portions of code were re-used, the overall risk associated with a live upgrade was minimized. This is a multi-location system with 300 I/O points and the offsite work took just two weeks. Owing to the significant re-use of hardware and wiring, Neal Systems and Eurotherm were able to then remove, replace, and commission the T940 processors and update the SCADA computers in one week.
The plant never experienced downtime in excess of an hour.
During this site week, the three SCADA computers were replaced with PC’s at the latest windows version with licenses to match. A new Ethernet switch was used to connect everything together.
The majority of their existing equipment remained in place. The enclosures and screens stayed the same, and there were no field wiring changes. This reduced the total cost of the project by 70% and the risk by 80%. The operators did not require any training since the system looked and worked exactly the same as before. Interruption to plant operations was minimal and all work was performed during the day shift.
Neal Systems is pleased to announce that we are partnering with Keller America, one of the premiere names in Submersible Pressure Transmitters for the water / wastewater industry. NSI will be covering New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Delaware. Keller’s probes include built-in lightning protection, slim design for tight still wells, and NSF approval for new water facilities. They also feature some of the world’s premiere pressure transducers, made in Switzerland with extreme precision.
Why transition from Chessell Review to Eurotherm Reviewer?
The review software no longer works with Windows 10. The support for this program ended 2 years ago. This causes the program to crash and freeze. Neal Systems provides an economical upgrade service program via a virtual meeting to help our customers make the transition from Review to Reviewer.
By using the Neal Systems upgrade service, you are able to keep all of your data records from Review and transfer them to the Reveiwer software.
A Little History:
Eurotherm Review is a PC-based software package that allows the display and printing of archived data files from the Eurotherm range of Data Acquisition units. These include Series 4000, 5000, 6000 recorders and the PAC2750 Automation The Eurotherm™ T2750 Programmable Automation Controller (PAC) combines high performance and high availability into a cost-effective solution, designed to maximize uptime, and meet the stringent regulatory requirements of advanced manufacturing industries.
This application program was intended to provide our customers with a simple SCADA system like solution which did not involve licensing and IT support. Review was a single PC based program not intended for Enterprise network use.
The program was written by Eurotherm and originally introduced 30 years ago.
Looking Forward:
With the ever increasing need for data availability across networks and the need for increased functionality, Eurotherm started to develop a successor to Eurotherm Review called Reviewer.
Eurotherm Data Reviewer is a software application designed for the viewing, analysis and printing of historical data files acquired from Eurotherm data acquisition equipment such as, but not limited to: Paperless graphical recorders – 6000 series. Hybrid recorders/controllers – NanoDac™ recorder/controller range.
Eurotherm Reviewer is written to operate with Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019.
Reviewer is available in two Versions:
· Foundation – single PC version – one time license – no fee.
· Enterprise – Server installation – one time license fee – multiple clients via a web browser.
Is upgrading right for you?
Yes, contact our team for a demo and find out why upgrading is the best option for you right now.
