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The importance of E&I equipments

Revamping in a Scientific research

Institute

Costruzioni Elettrotecniche Cear highlights its experience on revampings

n a scientific research institute a lot of technological visit pictures and notes
equipment are installed with high level of performance related the part of each
and availability required for their scope of use. Even power and control system
if a long lasting term of use is foreseen, usually they that has to be modified; so
need maintenance over the years and, sometimes, that the technician, that
Iaccording to the new requirements related the would have been involved
update of the plant, they need to be modified. in the project, collected
This means for the Scientific research institute a big information regarding a
investment but also a challenge where should be foreseen PLC control panel, SCADA
a minimum risk of failure or inconvenience related the system, Motor Control
above modification or maintenance. Center and all field existing electrical and instrumentation
For this reason, teams of engineers and technicians are connection. This was necessary to develop the new
involved in a very tight schedule where everything is engineering documents, that have to integrate and
planned in order to avoid any mistake or unforeseen event. complete the old ones given by the customer, as for
Costruzioni Elettrotecniche Cear has been involved in the example the design of the updated equipments and
past two years in many projects of revamping for some technical documentation necessary to buy and
E&I equipments related technological units of an important manufacture new parts of the control system.
European Scientific Research Institute. All of these documents, needed to be checked and
approved by the customer and once this activity was
The involvement of Cear has started in 2015 for the completed, the design phase could start in order to
Revamping and update of existing Control System of 3 develop the modification of the E&I control System and
cooling and ventilation group of an important section of start manufacturing some hardware parts, in our workshop,
laboratories. to be installed during installation phase.
Each of this cooling and ventilation group control system
was composed by a Motor Control Center for feeding the The main hardware modification developed on PLC
machineries and was composed by a PLC control panel Control panel for the three control systems was to
that was communicating with a SCADA through a serial manufacture a new backplane, that have to substitute the
communication. old one, fitted with all equipment required for the proper
Cear’s involvement has started with doing a site visit done handling of the process. The backplanes shall be designed
at the very beginning in the bidding stage, in order to following technical prescriptions related Electrical and
collect all the relevant information, pictures and datas process standards issued by the laboratories.
necessary to be matched with the technical dossier These backplanes shall be dimensioned for a nominal
received by the customer. current of 25 A and a maximum short circuit current of 10
After this preliminary stage and order awarding, the job kA (Ik1) with a power supply is 1P+N+PE; they should
have been done in several stages that where defined by a have had installed newest models of PN/DP PLC and the
specific project schedule that foresees that the job has to I/O cards and some additional cable connection and
be partially done in factory and partially done with feeders necessary for the modification of the control
installation and modification on site . system, as for example temperature switch for ventilation
system or flow switches for each pump to digital PLC
The importance of site survey inputs; all of these requirements where related to the
At a first step was very important to collect during the site upgrade of the new control systems.

IndustrIal Plants - May 2017
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