Project Overview

The plant is a continuous running circulation aquaculture facility containing a fish hatchery; 20’ diameter fish grow out tanks and butchery. Dahlen Systems, Inc. primary role included the design and purchase of the instrumentation and controls, the creation of a process narrative, programming the control system, plant checkout, start-up and operator training.

The plant needed the ability to restart itself after a power failure or automatically fail over to a back-up generator. Each piece of equipment controlled by our system had an automatic mode and a manual mode for maintenance and testing. All of the systems function in full automatic with minimal operator intervention.

Remote carts were built to allow the operators to monitor several critical properties of the water. The carts were built using an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix™ processor, Allen-Bradley PanelView 300 and Grayhill EZ Com Radios. The carts were setup to automatically transmit the data to the main control system, however, if communications failed, the carts would store the data for up to 100 tanks. After communications are restored, the carts will automatically download the information to the main control system.

Project Costs

Total project $20M
Controls and instrumentation $350K

Controls/Instrumentation

Allen-Bradley ControlLogix™ 5500 processor

	5 racks of IO using a ControlNet network
	200 analog points
	150 discrete points

Allen-Bradley IntelliCENTER MCC’s on DeviceNet

	5 DeviceNet networks (one for each MCC)
	80 motors

Wonderware InTouch HMI

	5000 tags
	25 main screens showing a graphical representation of the process
	Several pop-up screens for common control of different equipment, i.e. motors.
	Ethernet network to the ControlLogix™ controller
	A second work station on a fiber optic Ethernet link
	Real time and Historical data logging using InTouch logging
	Additional data logging to MS Access of critical data for use by other systems

Remote stations to Critical Tank data

	Allen-Bradley Panelview 300
	Grayhill EZ Com Radios

ControlLogix™ processor to store information in case of a radio failure

Foxboro Valves/Instrumentation

	Pressure, Level, Temperature and Flow Control Valves
	Pressure, Level, Temperature and Flow Control Indication