Electric actuators with Profinet communications are being used for a modernization project at a wastewater treatment plant in Måløv, Denmark. The customer is Novafos, a major water company serving nine municipalities in eastern Denmark, close to Copenhagen.
For the first phase of the modernization, the company AUMA supplied five SA .2 actuators with AC controls and Profinet interfaces to operate penstocks and valves on the plant. Along with other equipment, they are connected to local Profinet controllers in a star topology.
“We decided to invest in Profinet communications because Profinet is an open Industrial Ethernet standard with standardised structures,” plant manager Søren Præstiin says. “We also appreciate that Profinet is easily configured to provide secure remote access and web services, for both the plant as a whole and individual field devices. These are features that will be very important for us in the future.”
A key reason for choosing AUMA actuators was the fact that they are available with direct Profinet connections and so do not require gateways. “We only considered devices with integral Profinet interfaces,” Mr. Præstiin explains.
Novafos operates 17 drinking water plants and 18 sewage treatment plants and treats around 20 million m3 of water annually. An estimated total of more than 400 actuators provides valve automation across the Novafos plants.