Precision valve position monitoring reduces environmental impact

Case Study

Reduce water leaks with real-time valve monitoring

Scaling wine production involves significant amounts of piping and valves to control the flow of both wine and water throughout the winemaking process. Measuring seal wear in real-time helps you to avoid wine contamination and water leaks with the smart valve position sensor from ifm.

Benefits

Reduce leaks with real-time

data via IO-Link

Receive real-time notification of

build-up due to grape solids

More precise process control when

switching between water and wine

The Results

Reduced water consumption & environmental impact
Better wine quality from precision control
Real-time knowledge of valve health

Scaling wine production involves significant amounts of piping and valves to control the flow both wine and water throughout the winemaking process. Measuring seal wear in real-time helps you to avoid wine and water leaks with the smart valve sensor from ifm. A leaking valve increases water consumption and environmental impact. With traditional analog valve position sensors, you only receive an open or close signal. With fully digital IO-Link data, you can view the percentage of your valve position in 1% increments. This allows you monitor any build-up that might be preventing the valve from fully closing, and helps you avoid diluting your wine with water in the line.

Reduce water usage by always knowing the status of your valves.

Challenges with analog

Only provide an open or close indication
No visual indication of valve position
Require more maintenance

With only receiving an open or closed indication, it is impossible to know that a seal is wearing and that a catastrophic failure might be imminent.

The solution

The smart valve position sensor from ifm was designed to reduce installation time. With fully digital IO-Link data, you can view the percentage of your valve position in 1% increments. This allows you to monitor any build-up that might be preventing the valve from fully closing, and helps you avoid diluting your wine with water in the line. This real-time data can be sent to various software systems for trending and further analysis. Using ifm software, you can set alert thresholds to receive proactive notifications if a valve starts to wear or water leaks are detected. Precision control and insight into your data reduces water consumption and subsequent environmental impact.

Technology & Implementation

Smart valve position sensor: the MVQ smart valve position sensor from ifm provides continuous position feedback and reduces installation costs.
IO-Link: embedded in most ifm sensors, IO-Link technology provides a fully digital signal and multiple process values over one wire. Connect these sensors to an IO-Link block to start the flow of data to your PLC, or bypass the PLC entirely and the data straight to higher-level visualization software.
moneo|software: one IIoT software solution to streamline efficiencies. Bring your sensor data into drag and drop dashboards. Once sensors are connected, remotely parameterize your sensor settings directly in the software. This makes recipe changes quick and easy.