British Nuclear Group Case Study - BTC 150 Cable Reeler Temperature Reading
TBG has provided British Nuclear Group with a thermal imaging and viewing system. The system constantly monitors the temperature fluctuations of a ‘System 150 Cable Reeler’,
which provides power to a moving crane situated within an experimental facility. The thermal image of the cable reeler is displayed on a touch-screen VDU situated outside the
experimental facility giving site personnel the ability to monitor the temperature fluctuations and respond to any alarm situations.
System Design
The system was developed using a National Instruments Compact FieldPoint 2020 Real Time control unit with a cFP-DO-410 module. Data from an ‘Irisys IRI 1002 Radiometer’ was
passed to the cFP-2020 via RS-232. The control unit processed the data in Real Time and sent packets of data to a QTERM-75 touch screen monitor over an Ethernet connection. The
QTERM-75 then displayed the data in a 16 x 16 grid to represent the image taken by the radiometer.
British Nuclear Group also wanted the option to use a laptop to locally view the Web interface screen provided by the CFP-2020. This would allow users to view a real time
image as seen by the radiometer, set alarm ranges, and view historical alarm events.
Design Challenges
The main design challenge in this system was to convert the data provided by the IRI 1002 Radiometer into a format suitable for viewing on the QTERM-75 monitor.
The QTERM-75 uses an object based programming language so two applications had to be designed and developed. One written in LabVIEW™ - to take the data passed by the
radiometer, log any alarm events and perform interpolation on the data to give a clear image on a PC. The other, written using the bespoke QTERM-75 language, accepted the
data sent from the cFP-2020, displayed it in a 16 x 16 grid (with colour representing temperature variance) and display an alarm banner should the need arise.
System Results
British Nuclear Group now have a system that will constantly monitor the temperature of the ‘System 150 Cable Reeler’ and alert site personnel to any dangerous rises in
temperature thus allowing preventative action to be taken before a serious fire breaks out.