PROBLEM
At one of the leading enterprises of the chemical industry, which produces mineral fertilizers, the issue of deteriorating health of workers in one of the leading workshops of the enterprise has become acute, and this, as you know, often leads to the occurrence of occupational diseases. To remedy the situation, the workplace was certified at the enterprise, as a result of which all harmful chemical elements that exceed the maximum permissible norms were identified, as well as their sources. In this regard, the company purchased special equipment to control the content of harmful substances in the air of the working area. But it was not possible to achieve the desired result, since the installed sensors did not have a common interface and data recording system, their method of notification of exceeding the maximum permissible concentration of harmful substances was carried out using sound and light alarms.
SOLUTION
Experts of our company have selected sensors for continuous monitoring of the concentration of sulfuric acid in the air with a built-in LoRaWAN wireless interface for the enterprise. For the originally installed sensors, we selected wireless LoRaWAN modems, which read information from the sensor outputs and transmitted data to the gateway. One gateway was enough to cover the entire site.
In addition to sensors for harmful substances, sensors were installed for temperature, humidity and monitoring of PM2.5 particulate matter in the air.
All these data from the sensors through the gateway were sent to the application server for processing and visualization. If an excess of the maximum permissible level of concentration of harmful substances was recorded anywhere, personnel at checkpoints were immediately notified by e-mail and other communication channels.
In addition, it was decided to install a predictive equipment diagnostics system, as well as temperature and vibration monitoring of critical components on conveyors and electric motors.
RESULT
Thanks to the deployed system based on LoRaWAN technology, we were able to adapt the Internet of Things to maintain a safe working environment and minimize harmful working conditions at the enterprise. This fact led to savings in payments for compensation of funds for work in hazardous working conditions and made it possible to reduce the amount of contributions to the pension fund to reimburse the pension benefits of the privileged category of pensioners. At the same time, analytic data from the predictive diagnostic system helps to anticipate equipment breakdowns and prevent production downtime during machine repairs.