Hazardmon.com – Revolutionising Site Monitoring and Maintenance

4B BRAIME Components LTD:

Introduction
It is well known that transporting dry dusty materials can create explosive atmospheres. Four conditions have to exist in order for the explosive state to occur. First of all there needs to be high concentration of dust, then there must be oxygen and there should also be an ignition source. If all of these appear in a confined space – an explosion will happen. The most common ignition sources have long been identified as over-heated bearings, misaligned belt, slipping belt and misaligned pulleys. The industry is saturated with various sensors and controllers that monitor those conditions and stop the machines automatically to prevent explosions. These systems (including a variety of systems from 4B) work really well, but there is one big problem with all of them. All these systems rely on the on-site personnel not to modify the system in order to run in bypass mode. With the ever-growing demands on the performance and efficiency of terminals and processing facilities, it is understandable that a shift manager may make a decision under pressure to keep a leg in operation even after an alarm has been detected. One can appreciate that there still are a number of ways to cheat the safety system and carry on running regardless of the dangers imposed to equipment and personnel.

4B Components have identified this problem and created a solution that will revolutionise the industry by introducing a greater level of transparency and record keeping. Hazardmon.com is a secure cloud based industrial monitoring solution that allows any registered user to login and see all their facilities in real-time from anywhere in the world. This product offers seamless integration with 4B’s communication BUS system – the T500 Elite “Hotbus” (please go to http://www.go4b.com/usa/products/ for more information).

Hazardmon.com Platform Features

• The website is designed to be modern, simple and user friendly. A new videos section will be appearing on the website very soon , which will have short videos demonstrating how flexible the product is and giving examples of how to use some of the more advanced or hidden features.
• Secure and encrypted login and data transfer of industrial strength – 256bit SSL. This ensures website security and data safety.
• No on-site server or PLC needed. No upkeep and upgrade costs. No hardware to replace or backup. The F500 unit sends data directly to our server in the cloud.
• All the data is stored in the cloud and backed up in multiple locations making the data extremely secure. The end user does not need to worry about backing up the data off-site. In the event of an explosion, because the data is stored off-site it will not be lost, and it would be possible to analyse the data and use it as evidence in determining the cause of explosion.
• The webserver is constantly being updated and the user experience improved. Additionally more and more products from 4B are being supported. With this product you get the peace of mind that your facility will always be at the leading edge of technology!

Live Sensor View
It is possible to view multiple sites from one system dashboard page. This is very unique as the normal procedure is to login to each site’s VPN and then view each SCADA/PLC system one by one. The latter is very timely, requires long and complicated setup and is not user-friendly. Hazardmon also indicates all active alarms from all the facilities in one place as soon as you log in. The manager can see if any problems exist on any of his sites in seconds!

All the sensor data can be viewed in real-time in any browser. The website is completely dynamic and the sensor status and value are updated automatically without the need to refresh the webpage. The website was designed to dynamically resize as the screen resolution changes and it is optimised for Tablet and Mobile Phone platforms.

Historical Data Analysis
All data can be viewed as graphs. A unique drag–and-drop feature of the graphing page allows for a quick display of graphs for the sensors that you are interested in and compares the values side-by-side. A range of time windows can be selected, ranging from 1h to 30 days. Charts are interactive and show point values and sensor statuses on mouse-over as well as supporting zooming and scrolling.

All alarms are stored in a separate alarm log. Using the website filtering options it is very easy to generate a report and save it as an excel spreadsheet. All the alarms are grouped into different alarm types, like “Alarm Detected”, “Alarm Cleared”, “Device Power Up”, etc. All this allows information to be extracted in a few clicks and create a report in seconds.

Email and SMS Notifications Engine
A very flexible notification system allows any user to receive email notifications when sensors go in to and out of alarms; when the internet connection between the “Hotbus” system and the server is lost or when an alarm has not been cleared for a number of minutes. It is possible to receive emails only when an alarm has not been clear for a specified number of minutes or if more than a specified number of alarms were detected on a particular site in the last hour.

Report Generation Tool
An advanced analytics tool allows reports to be generated that summarise the safety and efficiency of the factory. Currently it is possible to see which sensors caused most of the alarms, which hours of the day had most alarms and a pie chart that shows the distribution of alarm types. The start and end dates of the report can easily be altered and the report re-generated. It can then be saved to the user’s PC in a single click.

Automated Maintenance and Testing Functionality
It is important to periodically check that the electronics monitoring system will in fact detect an alarm when a dangerous condition occurs. The current standard in the industry is for the technicians to walk around the site and test sensors. A paper report is then generated and in some cases this report is converted to an excel spreadsheet or similar. There is still absolutely no guarantee that the technician actually performed any of the testing. HazardMon’s automated sensor test tool function on the website (we call it “Maintenance”) is unprecedented and novel. It ensures test procedures are carried out, logged and reports automatically generated, facilitating sensor testing for technicians and giving confidence to site managers. This feature provides documented evidence that each sensor has been tested to ensure it is working correctly and is capable of generating an alarm when needed. The user needs to go to the maintenance tab of the website and click on a sensor that needs to be tested. The website then temporarily stops the alarm notifications for this sensor, so that no nuisance alarm notifications are sent out. The user then has 5 minutes to cause and alarm and 5 minutes to clear the alarm. The whole process is fully automated and a report can be generated at the end of the process in just a couple of clicks.

Conclusion
As more and more facilities have an electronic system installed to monitor the site’s safety the main cause of problems, which is the human factor and lack of transparency still exists. The Hazardmon.com combined with the 4B Hotbus monitoring system will allow the senior management, engineering management and technicians – all to have real time access to the data, which dramatically increases transparency and therefore the management can be certain that the company policies are fully adhered to and that their facility is safe.

Hazardmon.com was launched at the GEAPS Exchange/Expo in Louisville KY, USA, in February 2013 where it was also a featured product in the GEAPS WHAT’S NEW PROGRAM. There was much excitement from industry leaders and plant managers. They could see how this new product would give them “eyes on” their plant 24/7 and help make their plants to be safer and more reliable. Since the exchange a number of US and EU grain handling companies have installed HazardMon and many more are planning on using it.

The best way to try out this novel product is to go to www.hazardmon.com and register for a free demo account. All you will need to do is type in your full name, company name and email address. You will immediately get an account activation email with a link that you will need to follow in order to set a password for your account. This is completely free. The demo account gives access to all the features of a full account. If you feel that Hazardmon.com is a system for your facility, then pleases contact your 4B representative and we will be happy to set up a webinar and explain the system benefits and advantages in further detail.