Hi folks,
It's a Monday morning and the centrifuge has blocked up again over the weekend.
Specifically, the valves in the sludge supply pipework to the centrifuge are blocked, with solid debris from the thickeners.
The red icons in today's image are representations of the sludge feed pumps within the plant SCADA.
They're red due to a flow sensor upstream of both pumps detecting a flow rate of zero within the pipe while a pump was running.
This triggered the plant PLC to turn off the duty pump and switch to the standby.
This also faulted shortly thereafter due to no flow, so the PLC shut off the centrifuge completely.
Same thing happened 2 weeks ago.
The downtime is getting a bit ridiculous.
There's a simple solution to this issue, and I'm currently working on my plan for presenting it to management.
I've finished a rough Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) that depicts the solution, which I'll share with you tomorrow.
In the meantime, take it easy...