Manage Gas Cylinders

Industrial Facilities – Solutions

Overview

Industrial Gas Cylinders are used in a variety of facilities from Semiconductor fabs to Chemical plants. The gases may cost thousands of dollars per cylinder, and a constant reliable supply is critical for production operations. The most up-to-date plants have automatic gas cabinets with constant monitoring and alarming to ensure that gas consumption is tracked and analyzed, and depleted cylinders are replaced at the appropriate time.

The Challenge

A majority of facilities were designed and built more than 15 years ago, and do not have the latest automated monitoring technologies. In fact, most rely on technicians to perform manual rounds once or twice per day to read regulator gauges on top of cylinders. Readings may then be manually entered into spreadsheets for analysis, or simply written in a log book. This manual method has three major shortcomings.

Higher Labor Cost: Skilled labor can be more productively deployed in other plant maintenance or improvement activities instead of reading gauges.

More Downtime: Reading gauges once per day may be insufficient frequency. Unexpected circumstances such as unique production runs, leaks, or cold weather condensation can affect gas supply. Running out of gas results in costly production disruption.

Waste of Unused Gas: To avoid running out of gas, cylinders may be changed out even when they are 20-30% full. In addition to the wasted cost of the gas, there is an unwanted environmental impact and potential disposal fees associated with partially used cylinders.

The Cypress Envirosystems Solution

The Cypress Wireless Gauge Reader (WGR) is an “electronic eyeball” device which clamps onto existing regulator gauges to read tank levels. It takes minutes to install without the need to break seals, perform leak checks, or run wires. The gauge needle reading is digitized and transmitted wirelessly to a central receiver/hub where the data can be accessed by any PC or Mac with an internet browser. The data may also be shared with an existing automation system and operator stations via OPC or BACnet interfaces.

Built-in trending and historization allows analysis of gas use, and email and text message alarming and notification alert operators or gas suppliers when to change cylinders.

For mixed-phased gas where weight measurement is important, the Wireless Transducer Reader (WTR) can communicate with legacy gas controllers to obtain weigh scale data, and transmit it wirelessly to the central receiver/hub.

Case Studies

Customers using the Cypress Envirosystems Wireless Gas Cylinder Monitoring solution have documented payback periods of under 18 months.

Reducing Costs by using Wireless Sensors for Cylinder Monitoring (Jan 2010)