Hawk Measurement Praetorian Fiber Optic Sensing Conveyor Health Monitoring System
The Praetorian Conveyor Health Monitoring System (CHMS) is a plant & site wide single solution for detecting when critical parts of the idler are beginning to fail. The early detection warnings allow operators to control down time and avoid catastrophic costly unplanned shutdowns. HAWK’s Praetorian Fiber Optic Sensing detects abnormalities in conveyor idler performance that other technologies cannot.
Principle of Operation:
The Praetorian system Interrogator unit is connected to one end of a fiber optic cable which is attached to the conveyor belts static structure. The Interrogator produces rapidly pulsed laser light set at a precise frequency that excites the fiber and causes it to be responsive to physical changes around it. Some of this light is reflected back (backscattered) to the light source where the Interrogator records and analyses looking for changes to its physical effects in the application.
How does it work?
Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) continuously monitors Vibration, Sound and Acoustic Energy along the fiber using a process called Rayleigh Backscatter along the entire length of an optical fiber. Using a “time of flight” calculation on the laser pulse the position of any incoming signal can be determined to within a meter on up to 80 kilometres (50 miles) of fiber.
Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) and Distributed Strain Sensing (DSS) work in a similar way, but use a looped fiber within the sensing cable to detect both Temperature and Strain. The laser is sent down both sides of this loop and the interference pattern allows for Brillouin Backscattering to be measured revealing changes to Strain and Temperature within the fiber.
Praetorian has a built-in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which quickly records, processes and analyses the data collected by the system and detects and reports signals generated by problematic events within the environment.
Features:
- Proven ROI by predicting breakages and failure BEFORE occuring
- Immune to the effects of a broken or cut fiber
- System is passive, no electricity is required in the field
- Self-diagnostics monitor the unitÍs condition and maintain optimum performance
- No maintenance or calibration require after commissioning
- Monitor up at 80km (50mi) at the same time.
- 24/7 real-time monitoring
What does Praetorian tell me?
Praetorian has a built in Human Machine Interface (HMI) and can be operated directly or connected to existing Control Systems (such as SCADA) via a digital communications protocol (Typically TCP/IP) and report:
- The location of the alarm
- The classification of the alarm
- The alarms longitude and latitude
- The intensity of the alarm
- A time and date stamp of the alarm
- And other detected conditions depending on the specific application
