Summary

William van den Akker, the system integrator at Liberty Control Systems (an affiliate of Liberty Gasturbine Holland in Putten, the Netherlands) knows all about this from personal experience. The machines produced by the company are fairly special. They go by the name "Steamexfire", which means "steam extinguishes fire", and the Steamexfire units are indeed fire extinguishing units.

The heart of each unit is a jet fighter turbine that can produce enormous quantities of oxygen-free steam. This steam can be used to put out fires in large enclosed spaces, such as coal mines and tunnels.

A mining company in Ukraine purchased two more Steamexfire units last December. Due to the long distance between Putten and Ukraine (2500 km), Liberty Control System outfitted the extinguishing units with eWON 2101 Internet routers.

How it works

William van den Akker explained: "The mine in Ukraine produces a lot of methane, so there is a considerable risk of explosion. The Steamexfire units there are constantly available and have been used several times already. We have a link to the machines from Putten because we have connected the PLCs there to eWON 2101 routers".

"We receive a text message here via GPRS each time the machine starts or stops. We can also upload data log files. For this, we use Talk2M, a free Internet service from eWON. We also use this service to implement software updates from our site here. However, the most important aspect is, of course, remote maintenance".

The results

The company’s machines operate all over the world, and in order to ensure that they can be accessed from company headquarters in a village in the Veluwe region of the Netherlands, he combines PLC controllers with eWON industrial Internet routers.

The major advantages of eWON are ease of use, security, infrastructure independence and low cost.