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Monitor Workstation Enclosure Temperature

Hello,

We have four workstations inside washdown rated enclosures throughout the process.  These enclosures have their own cooling systems.  A while back we had secondary network issues with one of the workstations, and found that the cooling unit had failed.  After repairing the cooling unit, the network issues disappeared.  We performed a test, and without cooling, the temperature can exceed 110 °F inside the enclosure.  I know most electronics are rated to 140 °F, but cooler is always better, and we have settled on trying to keep things below 95 °F.

Anyway, I was wondering what options I have to monitor temperature inside these enclosures so that I can have alarms in DeltaV that the control room operator can respond to.  I know I could use the smallest CIOC, but there is not very much room inside these enclosures, and an entire CIOC for each workstation seems like overkill.  The enclosures are not located very close to one another, so one CIOC for all four would have not so pleasant wire pulls.  Likewise, the PK Controller seems like overkill, plus our organization is not fond of the licensing scheme.

It is disappointing to have a fully functional computer with network drops, but no way to have I/O.

Thanks.

2 Replies

  • First thought that comes to mind is wireless. Have you thought of adding a wireless gateway (Rosemount 1410) and wireless temperature transmitters (Rosemount 648) to the enclosures? This would also give you the infrastructure to use wireless in other applications. There are distributed CHARMS that might be an option, but I would think this would be more costly than wireless.
  • In reply to RickV:

    I have not considered wireless, because our organization is extremely reluctant to "broadcast" our process information. However, these are just enclosure temperatures and have nothing to do with the process, so I might be able to get permission.

    I am still hoping that there is something that can utilize the DeltaV network that is already in the enclosure.