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Monitoring Salt Water Disposal Tanks
Application: Monitoring water in tanks to prevent spills
Challenges: Shutting down the pump when water levels are too high
Solution: MultiHop Wireless Radio
Benefits: Wirelessly signal the pump to turn off
In most natural gas fields, salt water is removed from the ground along with the gas. This salt water must be stored in large tanks, often miles away from the gas fields.
When the salt water tanks are filled, the pumps in the field need to stop pumping the salt water to prevent salt water spills. If this salt water is spilled out of the tank, the EPA levies fines. Manually monitoring the salt water tank levels is time consuming and can result in accidental spills.
Description
Automatically monitoring the tank levels and controlling the pumps out in the gas field eliminates human error and can more quickly prevent costly spills.
When the battery of salt water tanks is filled, a signal is sent wirelessly from the tank battery to the field pump to shut down the well. When the tank battery and pump are separated by miles of terrain, Banner’s MultiHop radios are an ideal solution.
Submersible pressure transmitters are installed at the base of the tank and monitoring the total depth of salt water inside the tank. A MultiHop master radio and PLC at the salt water tank location signals when to turn on and off the pumps at each well location.
Repeater radios installed at salt water transfer stations between the tanks and the well pumps relay the wireless signal back to the well site when terrain or distance requires repeaters. Slave radios, installed out in the field with the pumps’ PLCs and variable frequency drives (VFDs) turn on and off the pumps to prevent spills.
When the salt water tank levels are known and the pumps can be shut down automatically, costly salt water spills are more easily prevented. The MultiHop radio system, using slave and repeater radios, can easily handle the difficult terrain found in most oil and natural gas fields.
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