Our Outdated Emissions Monitoring System Fails To Report Critical Data And Puts Us At Risk With Compliance. Can You Automate Our Existing System For Continuous, Real-Time Monitoring?
What Our Client Said
The emissions monitoring system in our chemical plant is unreliable. It consistently fails to provide critical emissions data and to report in a timely manner, and that could ultimately lead to environmental compliance issues and fines. Manually accessing this information is time-consuming, tedious and often results in data that is days old. We need LSI to convert our existing system to an enhanced platform that displays this data in real time.
What We Heard
Our outdated emissions monitoring system is putting us at risk. Due to the rollup and data filtration process taking days to complete, our reports are often unreliable and out-of-date. We need LSI’s team of experts to automate the system to enable continuous monitoring and reporting, plus provide real-time compliance information.
What We Did
Increased visibility of compliance issues through automatic email notifications • Provided cumulative compliance data in real time • Improved report creation speed
LSI’s team utilized the existing system to develop monitoring equations and compiled reports on environmental emissions data into Excel spreadsheets. Carried out over the course of a two-and-a-half-month period, this process resulted in 30 individual spreadsheets that were eventually summarized into one final report.
This report was used as the basis for an intelligent database utilizing OSIsoft’s PI Asset Framework. Not only did this conversion automate the existing emissions monitoring system, but it also enabled event capture capabilities for easy rollup reporting. The new system proactively monitored potential compliance issues and sent alerts via a plant-wide email when emission levels surpassed regulatory limits. Part of the system’s new automation features – utilizing PI Vision dashboards – also protected against lost data due to communication mishaps. It even included a user-friendly web display that operators could use to digitally record notes while viewing emission reports. Overall, the upgraded system was robust, reliable and capable of providing continuous data and emission reports in real time.
LSI provided:
- Data reports and calculation
- Data collection
- PI Asset Framework
- Startup and commissioning
- System integration
- System training
- Testing of completed system
The Results Speak For Themselves
Improved reporting speed and accuracy
By automating the current system via PI Asset Framework, LSI significantly reduced the time needed to access emission data (data filtration) and create environmental reports. In fact, reports that originally took days are now immediately available once users log in to the PI Vision web page.
Continuous data provides protection from fines
Proactive monitoring provides continuous, real-time cumulative compliance information. This ongoing collection of data – as well as the system’s built-in alert functions – have increased overall data visibility at the chemical plant and significantly lowered its risk of environmental compliance issues that might have otherwise resulted in fines.
Increased visibility and real-time data
The introduction of PI Vision dashboards provided the chemical plant with visibility and functionality previously not possible with the existing system’s lack of automation. Data isn’t just provided in real time; it’s displayed in a way that enables the operator to capture notes regarding the process. As a result, the root causes of many environmental compliance excursions have been identified and eliminated.
LSI Listened
LSI listened, then we put our knowledge of emissions monitoring and data reporting to work, creating a powerful new automated software database. This updated system now provides proactive monitoring, continuous real-time data collection, and a dramatically reduced risk of environmental compliance issues.
An outdated, unreliable monitoring system was exposing a chemical manufacturer to a wide variety of environmental compliance risks. By contacting LSI’s experts to automate the existing system via PI Asset Framework, that same facility now has a reliable, robust system that continuously monitors emission levels and displays critical data in real time.