Slow progress on Mercury CEMS Installation
We have been working on the Thermo Fisher Scientific Mercury Freedom installation for 3 weeks and have hit a series of snags. We are the first production installation (there is 1 R&D unit running) of the probe controller on the stack using the 82X configuration dubbed the “X Box”. Basically we did not want to run copper lines down the stack because here in Flordia we call that a lightning rod. We instead opted to install the probe controller on the stack and use fiber converters to connect the analyzer and the probe controller which normally sit in the rack together and use RS-485 over copper. The communication via fiber seems to work well and I must say that the analyzer and calibrator with their i-Series displays and menu system are very easy to use. The analyzer coordinates the actions of the calibrator and the probe controller. Thermo excels at this sort of thing and those components are impressive.
The 82X design basically takes the guts out of the standard Thermo blue box and puts them in a NEMA enslosure that is mounted on the stack. Fiber converters carry the RS-485 signals but other than that it is supposed to be identical to the regular probe controller.The long umbilical runs from the analyzer and calibrator up the stack and into the probe enclosure. The long umbilical going up the stack contains only tubing, thermocouples, and heat trace (the thermocouples and heat trace are terminated on the stack inside the X Box). Another short umbilical connects the probe controller box and the probe. This short umbilical contains tubing and a series of wires which allow the probe controller to read the thermocouples, power the heat traces, and control all of the probe components such as solenoid valves, the large ball valve, and heaters for the probe, stringer, and converter. This short umbilical has caused many of the problems. We discovered that the first set (1 for each unit we are installing) contained some bad wires meaning that there was no continuity from one end to the other. We were sent replacements which I am told have the same problem. For now we are using outside wires to carry these signals.
We have discovered some problems with the umbilical heater circuits. This has been a confusing issue from the beginning because Thermo states that you need a heater zone for each 200ft of umbilical. Our lines are in the 500+ ft range so I originally planned on 3 zones but the probe controller will only support one or two zones so we have 2 zones of about 250+ ft each. Right now we cannot get the probe controller to properly read the two zones and there are some problems with the control circuitry so we cannot maintain the proper temperature. We received upgraded controller boards since they have been tweaked since our unit shipped but this did not correct all of the problems. This could be a grounding or shielding issue and we have some work to do to get to the bottom of it. At this point we have shut the systems down with a purge to keep everything clean and we are working with Thermo to determine the next step.
It is expected to have some hiccups at this early stage. I am told that Thermo has about 100 systems shipped so far and I’m sure that most of those have not yet been installed. I’m pretty confident that we will get past these problems.
On another note, I received confirmation that your calibration gas hydrators, a firmware upgrade, and a lamp controller update for the analyzer were all shipped and should arrive next week.
I’ll post again next week with more details. I imagine that it will take a few weeks to get everything straight.