September 11, 2018

Overview

A manufacturing facility asked Grantek to help mitigate risk of cross-contamination caused by valve malfunctions on their fluid bed dryer system. The facility has received a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) observation that the fluid bed had the potential to introduce cross-contamination into the product if its valves malfunctioned or failed.

Challenges

• The fluid bed dryer equipment skid requires additional monitoring of valve position, to alert facility technicians of a valve malfunction.
• The additional sensors must be added to the existing Building Automation Systems (BAS).

Solution

• Grantek added valve position detection sensors to the fluid bed dryer equipment skid, programmed the skid’s PLC to manage the additional status alarm sensors, and added the additional alarms to the existing BAS.
• Grantek was able to connect the valve sensors to the skid’s PLC and thus receive alarm signals from the valve state detection sensors via Ethernet, eliminating the need for additional dedicated wiring from the skid to the BAS.
• Grantek configured the BAS to pick up the alarms from the skid controller to detect the valve state. Grantek installed the sensors and completed all programming.
• Grantek trained facility staff on the newly added alerts and the corrective action required if the BAS indicated that a valve was detected as being in the wrong position. The alarms included new identifiers for each piece of equipment, displayed as a fluid bed alarm, so the technicians would know what to do.

Results

The facility mitigated the risk of fluid bed valve malfunction to an acceptable level. The customer was satisfied that the added sensing equipment would be effective in preventing cross-contamination of product caused by valve malfunction. Grantek can extend BAS capability throughout the plant to monitor production equipment as well as building automation.