Effluent Monitoring by Radio at British Steel's Scunthorpe Works

A scanning telemetry system

British Steel has recently installed a series of effluent monitoring stations to continuously monitor quality parameters such as pH, turbidity and flow in the water courses entering and leaving the Scunthorpe Works. Any deviation in the quality of discharged water is speedily detected to allow corrective action to be taken before the water leaves the site. Magenta Products supplied the scanning radio telemetry system to provide communications with outstations located within the 12km² site. Initially twelve Magenta outstations were installed, each of which was equipped with eight 4-20mA analogue inputs, eight digital outputs and eight digital inputs. Later, expansion to the system was easily achieved by the addition of more outstations and a software modification to the base station. All the information is stored for detailed interpretation and is accessible through the works on British Steel's local area network. The introduction of this highly efficient equipment is the latest step in British Steel's ongoing commitment to a series of protection measures designed to safeguard the environment, in particular Bottesford Beck, to which treated process water is returned.

This system was implemented with the MP2600 series radio telemetry stations.