By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Automation CommunityAutomation Community
  • PLC
  • Automation
  • Instrumentation
  • Calibration
  • Electrical
  • Courses
    • Siemens PLC Course
    • Allen Bradley PLC Course
    • InTouch SCADA Course
    • WinCC SCADA Course
    • Siemens Tia Portal
    • Omron PLC Course
    • Advanced PLC Course
Search
  • Customize Interests
  • My Bookmarks
© Automation Community. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Fire Fighting Pump Room Monitoring System – PLC Project
Share
Notification Show More
Aa
Automation CommunityAutomation Community
Aa
  • PLC
  • Automation
  • Instrumentation
Search
  • PLC
  • Automation
  • Instrumentation
  • Calibration
  • Electrical
  • Courses
    • Siemens PLC Course
    • Allen Bradley PLC Course
    • InTouch SCADA Course
    • WinCC SCADA Course
    • Siemens Tia Portal
    • Omron PLC Course
    • Advanced PLC Course
Follow US
© 2023. All Rights Reserved.
Automation Community > Blog > PLC > Fire Fighting Pump Room Monitoring System – PLC Project
PLCCompetition

Fire Fighting Pump Room Monitoring System – PLC Project

Mahmoud Salama
Last updated: 2023/05/29 at 10:56 AM
Mahmoud Salama
Share
15 Min Read
SHARE

In this article we will show how we used a PLC to program a monitoring system for a fire-fighting pump room, to avoid having some reoccurring small troubles that caused a lot of very high-cost repairs.

Contents
Fire Fighting Pump Room Monitoring SystemTrouble 1Trouble 2PLC SolutionSystem OperationPLC ProgrammingMonitoring Level Function blockMonitoring Fire Pumps ConditionsMonitoring the Water Leakage SensorPLC Code simulationHow can we improve this PLC Project?

As the name suggests, this system is only to monitor the performance of the firefighting pumps and not to control the pumps themselves. As it is another system that maybe we can mention later in a separate topic.

Contents:

  • Problem description
  • Solution provided
  • System operation
  • PLC programming
    • IOs segregation
    • Monitoring Tanks’ Water Level FB
    • Monitoring fire pumps condition
    • Monitoring the water leakage sensor
  • Code simulation
  • how can we improve this project

Fire Fighting Pump Room Monitoring System

The fire fighting pump room has 1 electric and 1 diesel pump that is supposed to run one by one in case there was a fire present in the facility to feed to fire fighting sprinklers with needed pressured water for fire fighting. The pump room has also two water tanks to provide the pumps with the needed water. These tanks are manually filled when water is below a certain limit by the system technician.

The system faced two issues before that caused a lot of damage and money to repair that damage.

Trouble 1

One of the two tanks was being filled with water, but the technician forgot to close the filling valve and went home, the tank overflowed and water started to drain out of the tank. And because the room is underground, the water level started to rise inside the room and it reached a level where it was able to go inside the electrical panel for the diesel pump controller and the all electronic cards were damaged, the room was filled with water up to 1.5 meters high and caused a lot of damage. It is worth mentioning that there is a submersible pump system inside the room, but it wasn’t able to drain all the water coming from the tank to the outside of the room.

This small trouble caused a lot of money for repairing or replacing all damaged electronics, not to mention the downtime of the fire fighting system itself.

Trouble 2

A new worker, whose not fully trained yet, used one of the fire fighting nozzles for some domestic use, but he didn’t know that his action caused the diesel pump to start running to support the water pressure of the system, he also forgot and left the nozzle open to the point that the water tank level was very low and after a while, the pumps were dry running and that caused the diesel pump to eventually be damaged. And it caused a lot of money to repair this damage.

As you can see, both times, there was no actual fire, but lack of monitoring of the pump system in addition to personnel mistakes was a reason for a lot of damages and costs.

PLC Solution

To avoid such problems, a monitoring system using a PLC was suggested. As the name indicates, the system only provides monitoring to the pump room, giving a warning when an event exists that can cause component damage or hinder fire fighting system performance.

The suggested monitoring system will behave as follow:

  • A warning will be given if the water level in one of the tanks is very high or very low, this will be obtained by the use of water level switches.
  • A warning will be given if the diesel pump is running or if the diesel pump control system has a fault, this will be obtained through signal communication between the pump controller and monitoring system PLC.
  • A warning will be given if the electric pump is running or the electric pump controller has a fault. This will be obtained through signal communication between the pump controller and the monitoring system PLC.
  • A warning will be given if there is any presence of water on the room floor; this will be achieved through the use of a water leakage sensor on installed on the walls and floor of the room.
  • A warning will be given if the submersible pumps can’t drain all water below a certain level.

If you count previous points you will find that we have 10 warning signals that will be monitored by our PLC.

For outputs, we will have two main outputs which are a warning siren and a warning LED indicating there is a fault event occurring. There will be 10 LEDs one for each warning condition to indicate which fault condition is present at the moment.

System Operation

As we mentioned before the system will have no control over the fire fighting pump system, it will only monitor the behavior of the system and give warning if a fault condition is present. This will be done through the following steps:

  • For physical quantities like the tank’s water levels and the water leakage sensor signals, the monitoring system will wait for 10 seconds before deciding that this event is a warning case.
  •  For non-physical quantities like the Pump Run signal or Pump fault signal the system will immediately acknowledge this event and trigger the warning system.
  • When there is a fault condition, the siren can be stopped through the Silence Push-button.
  • The warning LED for each fault condition will not be OFF unless the fault condition is cleared and the Reset Push button is pressed.
  • Another Push button is provided to test all LED’s operation. When the Test push button is pressed all indication LEDs will be ON, and will stay ON until the Reset push button is pressed.

PLC Programming

IO segregation:

More Read

Level Sensors and Transmitters Questions and Answers

PLC Programming Questions and Answers

FOUNDATION Fieldbus Devices

PLC HMI Questions and Answers

Zigbee Communication Protocol Questions and Answers

The first step we made in programming the system is to assign the IOs to our project.

In a previous article, we talked about a best practice called IOs segregation, which is to assign each input or output signal to trigger a tag or a marker in a global data block and then use the new defined tags throughout the whole program. See picture 1.

Fire Fighting Pump Room Monitoring System - PLC Project
Picture 1 – IOs segregation

As you can see from the picture, when %I0.0 is ON it will trigger a tag Tank1LL inside the global data block named DATA. The same was done to all the IOs of the project.

Monitoring Level Function block

Next, we created a function block for monitoring the water level of fire tanks and also for the submersible pumps. We did that because the coding for all of them will be the same, so we used a function block to write the code only one time and reused it with all tanks.

Inside the FB we have created two separate logics, to monitor the LL level condition and the HH level condition. See pictures 2 and 3.

PLC Monitoring Level Function block
Picture 2 – Monitoring LL level

As you can see, when the signalLL is triggered, a monitoring timer will be activated and it will start counting the 10 seconds mentioned before, when 10 seconds pass, the warning Siren will be triggered.

LL level condition and the HH level condition
Picture 3 – LL alarm

In the next network, the monitoring timer trigger will also turn on the OutputLL which is the indication LED for the related tank LL alarm.

The previous code is generic code that can be used for any tank; we just need to associate the proper parameter with the right function block call. See picture 4.

Calling the Level Monitoring Function Block in PLC
Picture 4 – Calling the Level Monitoring FB

As you can from the previous picture, we dragged the FB inside the main OB1 block to call the function block. By assigning the parameters of fire tank 1 we are now monitoring the condition of tank 1.

The same can be done for tank 2 simply by calling the FB again, but this time we will assign the tank 2 parameters. See picture 5.

Reusing the FB for tank 2 and submersible pumps
Picture 5 – Reusing the FB for tank 2 and submersible pumps

Did you notice that we used the same FB for the submersible pumps, even though we only monitor the HH level for the submersible pumps? This is real proof of why using FB n your PLC code will make it easier to write and read.

Monitoring Fire Pumps Conditions

In this step, we created a function FC to monitor the run and fault conditions of the electric and diesel pumps.

We created the PLC Logic one time inside the FC and then call the FC two times for the electric and diesel pump. See picture 6.

Fire pump condition monitoring using PLC
Picture 6 – Fire pump condition monitoring FC

You will notice that the PLC code is similar to the previous FB, except for the monitoring timer. We want to give the warning immediately when the pump is running or has a fault condition which is why the timer wasn’t used in this case.

To use this FC with the electric pump, we simply call it inside the OB1 and assign the electric pump parameters to it. See picture 7.

Electric Pump PLC Logic
Picture 7 – Calling the FC for the electric pump

We do the same for diesel pumps. See picture 8.

PLC Programming for Diesel Pump
Picture 8 – Calling the FC for the diesel pump

Monitoring the Water Leakage Sensor

The code for monitoring the water leakage sensor is the same as the code inside the FB but it doesn’t make much sense to use the code for a function block called tank water level for a leakage sensor behavior that is why it is written separately in the main OB1.

PLC Code simulation

Now we compile and simulate our project to see if we met our PLC project functionality or not.

First, we will trigger the input for the water leakage sensor but for a time less than 10 seconds. See picture 9.

Water Leakage Sensor is Triggered in PLC Logic
Picture 9 – The water leakage sensor is triggered

As you can see, the siren didn’t go ON because the sensor was triggered less than 10 seconds as we programmed. See picture 10.

Sensor was Triggered in PLC
Picture 10 – Water leakage triggered more than 10 seconds

Now that the water leakage was triggered more than 10 seconds the warning siren and the indication LED are now both ON.

When the silence push button is pressed the siren should be OFF but the warning LED should remain ON. See picture 11.

The silence push button is pressed in PLC Program
Picture 11 – The silence push button is pressed

As you see, the siren went OFF when the silence push button was pressed, but the indication LED remained ON. To switch off the LED the reset push button should be pressed after the fault condition is cleared. See picture 12.

PLC Ladder Logic for LED Alarm Reset
Picture 12 – Resetting the alarm LED

Now that the reset push button is pressed, the alarm LED is OFF, provided that the fault condition is cleared.

This was a simulation of the PLC project code for only one signal, try to run the project and simulate other fault conditions and see how the system will react.

Project Downloads

  • PLC Project Code
  • PLC Program Backup

How can we improve this PLC Project?

The previous code already solve the existing problems, but there are many ways to solve the issue and even make the project better, some of these are the following:

  • Use analog-level sensors instead of digital sensors.
  • Adding an HMI to the project and eliminating the need for the push buttons and the indication LEDs.
  • Maybe allow some control over the firefighting system and not just monitoring. Like preventing the pumps from running if the water level is LL.

Read Next:

  • PLC LVDT Coding
  • Instructions in PLC
  • PLC Control Panel
  • NAMUR Sensors
  • VFD Drive Questions

You Might Also Like

DNP3 Communication – Distributed Network Protocol 3

Instrumentation Insights: Exploring Safety Integrity Level (SIL)

Safety PLC Interview Questions and Answers

PLC Hardware Questions and Answers – Automation Systems

Electrical Circuit Breaker Questions and Answers

TAGGED: PLC, PLC Example, PLC Logic, PLC Program, PLC Programming, PLC Projects, PLC Tutorials

Sign Up For Daily Newsletter

Be keep up! Get the latest breaking news delivered straight to your inbox.
[mc4wp_form]
By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Share This Article
Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp LinkedIn
Share
By Mahmoud Salama
Experienced Electrical Maintenance Engineer with over 7 years of experience. Skilled in PLC, SCADA, and HMI programming in many platforms(TIA-Portal on top).
Previous Article Resistance Temperature Detector Questions and Answers Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD) Questions and Answers
Next Article Valve Questions 14 Valve Questions
Leave a comment Leave a comment

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Stay Connected

120.5k Followers Like
10.1k Followers Follow
90.6k Subscribers Subscribe

Latest Articles

SNMP_question_and_answers
SNMP Questions and Answers
Automation August 25, 2023
Zigbee_question_and_answers
Zigbee Questions and Answers
Automation August 24, 2023
Z-Wave Questions and Answers
Z-wave Questions and Answers
Automation August 23, 2023
konnex_questions_and_answers
KNX (Konnex) Questions and Answers
Automation August 22, 2023
USB Protocol Questions and Answers
Automation

USB Protocol Questions and Answers

USB protocol is a standard technology used to communicate between computers and…

Padmini Devi By Padmini Devi August 8, 2023
Thermistor
Electronics

Thermistor Questions and Answers

Explore the Thermistor Questions and Answers to learn in-depth information about thermistors…

Editorial Staff By Editorial Staff July 7, 2023
DNP3 Communication - Distributed Network Protocol 3
AutomationPLC

DNP3 Communication – Distributed Network Protocol 3

Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) communication protocol is used in industrial process…

Editorial Staff By Editorial Staff July 14, 2023
Automation Community Competition Results
Competition

Automation Community Competition Results – January 2023 

I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for your…

Editorial Staff By Editorial Staff February 2, 2023
DeviceNet Questions and Answers
AutomationInstrumentationPLC

DeviceNet Questions and Answers – Industrial Network Protocol

Learn the DeviceNet Questions and Answers to understand the installation, configuration, and…

Editorial Staff By Editorial Staff June 16, 2023
Ethernet Questions and Answers
AutomationElectricalElectronicsInstrumentationPLC

Ethernet Questions and Answers

Discover valuable insights into Ethernet with our comprehensive collection of questions and…

Editorial Staff By Editorial Staff June 7, 2023
Show More
//

We provide resoucres to million users and we are the number one business and industrial automation news network on the planet

Quick Link

  • Customize Interests
  • My Bookmarks

Top Categories

  • PLC
  • Automation
  • Instrumentation

Sign Up for Our Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!

[mc4wp_form id=”847″]

Follow US
© 2023 All Rights Reserved. Supported by Inst Tools.
login
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?