“71Brewing are an independent brewery crafting crisp lagers and small batch brews inspired by new-wave, modern brewing techniques, traditional European styles and superior quality ingredients.”
71Brewing selected the Horner XL10 OCS along with SmartRail series I/O to control each of the brewing vessels in their brewery, monitoring temperature and pressure associated with each vessel. Use of SmartRail I/O rather than the XL10s inbuilt I/O allowed all I/O wiring to run to the back of the control panel for easier installation and also provided a cost effective way of implementing the analog input heavy I/O functionality.
Each vessel had simple logic controlling it. Temperature was monitored and if it was too low it was driven to the required temperature with a heating element controlled by a single digital output from the OCS system. PID was not deemed to be required, due to the slow nature of heating the vessel. The pressure within each vessel was also monitored, and alarm messages displayed on the XL10 screen if the pressure exceeded a fixed high limit. The RTD100 input module available in the SmartRail range gave the ability to monitor the temperature of the tanks with low cost, readily available PT100 type sensors. Pressures were measured using sensors providing a 0-10 V output, again tying easily in to the SmartRail I/O complement using ADC170 modules. Temperature control could be switched on or off manually by the operator, or be configured to switch off automatically at a manually entered time/date.
A final piece of equipment, the chiller unit, was also monitored and controlled, again in terms of the target temperature and various associated pressures. The temperature control of the chiller unit was much more responsive, so use was made of one of the OCSs inbuilt PID loops, and an analog output used to control the opening of a valve controlling the flow of Glycol into the chiller unit.
The OCS display allowed provision of an overview screen, capable of displaying key metrics from each tank plus the chiller unit. Touching on the icon for any tank allowed more in-depth information for the tank to be displayed, including a trend (graph over time) of the temperature, setting of the target temperature, and selecting manual or timed temperature control. Similarly, the chiller unit could also have its various setpoints and current levels displayed.
The inbuilt OCS alarm system was used to give the system operators central notification of alarm conditions, such as over pressures, and sensor failures.
The WebMI feature of the XL10 was also enabled allowing remote access to all the information available locally across the internet – allowing the brewing process to be monitored and controlled even when enjoying a ‘cold one’ in one of the many outlets selling 71Brewing’s products.