Safety and Business Drivers For EPA Compliance

EPA Regulations require this manufacturer of compounds (that include VOCs) to monitor any releases into the atmosphere. One source of release which has the opportunity to be monitored is around safety relief valves. The customer asked that the monitoring be as fast as possible. To meet that requirement, the Pros at Proconex set out to design a system that could monitor relief valve states at one-second intervals.

The issue to be solved was related to the process in an abnormal condition which may cause high pressures—leading to equipment damage and safety risks to personnel, if not properly relieved. The mechanical equipment was already in place to support this; however, the monitoring to know when the release occurred was not.

Because the relief valves were spread out throughout the facility, the use of wired technologies would be costly. A survey was done to determine the network architecture needed to support a one-second update rate. This required special consideration since the number of devices is extremely limited when one-second updates are required. A survey was completed and our Pros at Proconex determined that several networks were required to monitor the several dozen relief valves.

The plant installed the networks and are actively monitoring the safety relief valves to meet EPA compliance. It has been proven that wireless networks are capable of providing fast update rates in order to satisfy EPA requirements.