Why wireless valve position sensor?

Wireless manual valve monitoring

With a Wireless Valve Position Sensor, you can reduce the monitoring costs by 90% compared to Wired sensors – it’s accurate, fits on any manual, single-turn rotary valve, and installs in 30 minutes.

The Haltian Wireless Sensor has been developed together with a global processing company, and it is 100% field-proven for critical industrial usage. 

WIRELESS VS. WIRED VALVE POSITION SENSOR 

Besides the 90% cost reduction, and faster installation, Wireless sensors provide you with several benefits – see the full Comparison table below!

wired-vs-wireless-valve-position-sensor

HOW TO REDUCE VALVE MONITORING COSTS BY 90% WITH WIRELESS SENSORS?

Remote valve monitoring is used in factories and plants in the chemical process industry, pulp and paper, water and waste-water treatment and process automation.

It detects the valve position with a sensor or indicator mounted on the valve and reports the valve’s position data to the central control system. All the valves can be remotely monitored in real-time from thousands of points along with the pipelines. This provides several benefits:

  • Remote valve monitoring can bring massive cost savings
  • It enables faster process shut down, and recovery after maintenance breaks
  • It increases safety at the plant
  • Reduces the occurrence of errors and quality deviations
  • It provides valuable analytics and can help to prevent unplanned downtime.
Remote monitoring for manual hand valves, IoT for smart factories, predictive maintenance

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES WITH THE WIRED VALVE POSITION SENSORS?

Why aren’t all factories and plants using remote valve monitoring yet? Retrofitting wired sensors on thousands of valves, some of which can be very old and manufactured by different vendors, is costly and time-consuming. The main challenges with the wired sensors are:

  • Current Valve Position Sensors typically fit only one type of valve, and different manufacturers sell their own specific sensors. This means costly hardware investment and time-consuming procurement.
  • Several industrial communication protocols such as Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus, DeviceNet, AS-Interface, CAN and HART require costly software interface customization.
  • Most Valve Position Sensors are wired since they need cabling for electricity and data. This increases installation costs and deployment time when there are thousands of valves in a factory. In the worst case, a maintenance break is needed when the wired sensors are installed.

SAVE TIME AND COSTS WITH WIRELESS INDUSTRIAL VALVE SENSORS!

Things can be changed! By combining the latest industry-proven wireless technologies and ultra-durable materials, IoT provider Haltian, together with a global process industry company, developed a wireless sensor for remote valve monitoring. It allows factories to reduce their valve monitoring costs by up to 90% compared to the wired solutions!

Factories can reduce their valve monitoring costs by up to 90% compared to wired solutions!

HOW DOES THE WIRELESS VALVE POSITION SENSOR WORK?

This unique, Thingsee ANGLE sensor can be attached to several types of manual, single-turn rotary valves. It comes with a generic mounting adapter kit to make installation quick and easy. A clamp mounts the sensor on a pipe. Its rotating position indicator disc is attached to the valve lever with a simple clip.

This wireless sensor doesn’t need any cabling. After being switched on, the sensors automatically create a local, industry-grade Wirepas Mesh wireless network, which connects to your factory network through an accompanied gateway unit. The interference-tolerant sensors can automatically optimize the radio transmission power and frequency band, whenever required, and it runs for years with its battery.

Inside, the Angle sensor device has a magnetic sensor to detect the valve’s position with an accuracy of one degree (1°).

WIRELESS VS. WIRED VALVE POSITION SENSORS

Throughout a multi-year industrial investment horizon, the wireless sensor approach brings you several CAPEX and OPEX savings. These include:

  • Quick and easy installation – no cabling needed. Reduces your deployment costs when hundreds or thousands of valves are involved.
  • Works with several types of single-turn rotary valves made by any manufacturer – reduces your hardware costs and makes procurement easy.
  • You can avoid costly software customization for industrial communication protocols – the Angle sensor integrates straight into the central control system via an API
  • The position changes are reported to your control system in real-time – adjust the processes to their optimal levels faster!
  • With up to date information about all valves, you can avoid accidents and increase occupational safety at the plant
  • Avoid environmental damage by making sure hazardous fluids are not leaked
  • The operation staff typically operate manual valves based on their tacit knowledge – valve monitoring enables you to digitize and store the tacit knowledge
  • End-to-end data enables you to measure and optimize the processes.

IN CONCLUSION

Remote Valve Monitoring provides process industries, significant benefits – cost savings, better safety, and continuous process optimization. However, the digitalization of manual valves has been dragging for too long due to clumsy, wired sensors, and high costs.

Haltian’s wireless Thingsee ANGLE sensor is an easy, yet robust industry-proven alternative with up to 90% lower costs and fast installation!