Tank level gauging flexibility suits OSVs

Wendy Laursen writes: Grandweld needed an accurate, reliable and flexible system of measurement that was compliant with all relevant marine standards and hazardous area approvals in order to meet the vessels’ twenty diverse level measurement applications. These included fuel, lubricant, water and drilling fluids in a number of process, storage and waste tanks distributed around each of two 57m OSVs. PSM provided a complete factory-configured system comprising ict 1000 level transmitters, RFM connection and barrier modules, and TankView, a Windows software based package using Modbus data communication for marine tank level acquisition, control and display.

The OSVs are designed to be adaptable in operation, and any tank can be used for multiple products. The flexibility of TankView allows easy reconfiguration to suit the voyage thus reducing the potential for errors in loading and unloading cargo. The hardware is ideally suited to withstand the harsh operating environments on board, says PSM, and the flexibility of the PSM Modbus digital tank gauging architecture allows multiple PCs to be used on the same data bus. This provides several points around the vessel for display and control of the tanks as well as system redundancy in case of failure of any PC.