A major London port import/export facility required an ATEX approved, Industry 4.0 compliant solution to avoid another potential serious conveyor fire.
A collapsed bearing at the facility caused the fire, which spread to ancillary equipment and caused several hundred thousand pounds worth of damage.
The port terminal has more than 50 conveyors and elevators, most are operated every day and run at high speeds. The elevators are over 65 metres in height and the larger conveyors run in both directions, all of which adds to the challenges.
The grain terminal, which is over one kilometre in length, and can store in excess of 250,000 tonnes of grain had more than 300 critical sensing points identified.
The Port Authority made use of 4B’s in-house installation team who delivered a full turn-key solution, training and ongoing support.
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4B’s award-winning IoT solution Hazardmon.com was used as the framework of this project. The company’s HOTBUS communication platform was selected as a means of connecting all the sensors together and aggregating the data.
Sensors are continuously monitored, and the resulting data is analysed in the cloud enabling predictive analysis and smart reporting.
Management and operators quickly embraced the system benefits with information being readily available via web enabled devices both on and off-site.
This solution was selected to be flexible, scalable and robust.
As a result, the system has prevented at least three incidents since installation, reduced the number of belt misalignment conditions by a factor of 20 and improved operation safety with all staff now warned of hazards immediately by email or SMS.