Case Studies
DataCapture was established in 1995. Since then, we have installed database, control and monitoring systems across a wide range of industries in the UK and worldwide.
We have worked at every project stage, including initial consultation, design, development, installation and long-term support.
We serve market areas ranging from nuclear waste to food production, power station control to water pumping. Here are a few examples:
Nuclear waste management
We developed a nuclear waste management system for Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd. in Scotland. This system allows operators to enter information about consignments of nuclear waste as they are encapsulated before being moved to permanent storage.
The system is implemented using WebData and is hosted on a secure cloud server, where it is regularly accessed by more than 50 simultaneous users. All data, pictures and supporting files are contained in a relational database, which has now grown to several tens of gigabytes in size.
The system has been well received by users and has now been operating for 16 years with no recorded downtime.
Power station control and monitoring
We upgraded and simplified an existing system in a UK-based gas turbine power station. The system is used for alarm monitoring and control of ancillary equipment. We upgraded the obsolete Allen Bradley PLC-5 controller using an Automation Direct Productivity 3000 PAC.
The software was updated from GE iFIX, first to Ignition and then to WebData, giving easy access to historical information. As well as the PLC, the system communicates with a number of different plant controllers and distributed data acquisition modules using Modbus TCP.
Wind turbine circuit breaker controller
We designed and developed a system for a large wind farm in the Scottish Borders. This system controlled the closure of the circuit breakers in each turbine to ensure the inrush current on closure of the main breaker was kept within acceptable limits.
A 16km fibre optic network ring was run between the turbines. An Allen Bradley ControlLogix PLC in the substation communicated with Point IO devices in each turbine to monitor their state and open and close the breakers when required.
A Local Red Lion G3 HMI (Human Machine Interface) gave local control as well as acting as a link to the Siemens site control system.