IOT News

Background

The aluminum smelting industry is facing increasingly stringent environmental regulations. The "HighQuality Development Implementation Plan for the Aluminum Industry (2025–2027)" explicitly calls for strengthened air pollution control and monitoring systems. An aluminum smelter operates one central DCS (Distributed Control System) master station to monitor equipment such as fans, water pumps, curing ovens, as well as gas analyzers and flow meters. The facility now needs to collect environmental protection data from its DCS system to meet regulatory requirements and enhance its digital management capabilities. WideIOT provides an allinone data acquisition solution.

Needs Analysis

A local monitoring system needs to be deployed to collect equipment operation status, uptime/downtime records, and trigger automatic alerts when data exceeds preset thresholds. The system must support highbandwidth, highvolume data transmission. In addition, the plant needs realtime monitoring of exhaust gas parameters such as nonmethane total hydrocarbons (NMTHC), methane, total hydrocarbons, and flow velocity. These should be presented in daily and monthly reports, trend curves, and other visual formats, with support for Excel report exports. The data must also be written to a local MySQL database for longterm storage and traceability.

Solution

WideIOT offers an "Industrial IoT Gateway + Data Middleware" solution. The industrial IoT gateway connects to the aluminum plant's DCS system to collect realtime production equipment data (operational status, uptime/downtime) and emission data (NMTHC, methane, total hydrocarbons, flow velocity, etc.). The data is transmitted via Ethernet to the data middleware and MySQL database, enabling remote monitoring, anomaly alerts, remote control, and data analysis—helping the plant build a "green factory."

Key Features

The gateway integrates multiple interfaces including serial ports, Ethernet ports, and I/O ports, making it compatible with data collection from DCS, PLCs, onsite sensors, and environmental monitoring instruments. It supports twoway communication with the local middleware and database, adapting to the diverse equipment connectivity needs of the plant.

It collects operational parameters 24/7 from key equipment such as intake and exhaust fans, circulation pumps, and curing ovens, and records uptime/downtime. The data is aggregated into the middleware to generate a visual dashboard, providing a clear overview of equipment status.

The system monitors critical environmental indicators in real time, including VOC concentration, exhaust gas flow velocity, and emission volume. It supports reporting to the environmental protection agency's management platform via the HJ212 protocol, making it easy to dynamically track production and discharge conditions.

Customizable alert thresholds are supported. When data exceeds the limits, alert notifications are sent via SMS, WeChat, and email to maintenance personnel, enabling rapid troubleshooting and helping avoid penalty violations and safety hazards.

The gateway connects to PLCs controlling spray towers and incinerators, allowing remote start/stop of valves, pumps, and fans, thereby improving response efficiency for exhaust treatment system failures.

All data is persistently stored in the database and can be retrieved at any time. This not only meets regulatory traceability requirements but also provides a data foundation for environmental technology upgrades and production optimization based on historical data.