LoRaWAN-Based Heat Meter Monitoring

In order to improve connectivity, reduce operating costs, and enable scalable, real-time thermal energy data acquisition over a complex industrial site, a leading European petrochemical plant replaced its unreliable cellular heat meter monitoring with an IIoT solution based on LoRaWAN.

Executive Summary

A top European petrochemical and refining company was experiencing challenges in the acquisition of heat meter data for analysis throughout their large industrial site. Legacy cellular routers endured harsh GSM/LTE signal penetration and reliability issues across steel and concrete building shells in pipeline-heavy areas. With Advantech's LoRaWAN solution, the plant realized stable and cost-saving data collection and simplified the complexity of the infrastructure.

The Challenge

The petrochemical site covers multiple square kilometers with the typical complex industrial infrastructure of the refinery and chemical processing industry: raised pipe racks (estacades), subterranean utility tunnels, concrete measurement chambers and metal enclosures containing vital instrumentation. The infrastructure previously had about 150 cellular routers to gather data from heat meters scattered across whole area. 

This approach would have several critical problems:

- Fluctuating GSM/LTE connectivity: Metal walls and dewars installed on concrete slabs, numerous industrial facilities, all cause extreme interference to cellular signals. 

- Heavy Maintenance Load: Each router needed to be configured individually, SIM card management and a maintenance visit to the field every now and then. 

- Requirement of external antenna installation: Some sites require an external antenna installation with long cable runs, which increases costs and potential source of failures. 

- Scalability limitations: Adding new measurement points required procuring and deploying additional cellular hardware with associated connectivity contracts.

The Solution

Instead of switching to higher-end cellular routers (e.g., Advantech ICR-1745 5G or ICR-1642 LTE series, which were initially evaluated), the project team opted for a generally different solution: LoRaWAN (Long Range WAN) technology.

What is LoRaWAN?

LoRaWAN is a Low-Power Wide-Area Network protocol tailored to IoT use cases. Rather than requiring telecom operators to provide base station infrastructure as with cellular networks, LoRaWAN allows entities to establish their own private wireless networks with outstanding range capabilities. 

Key advantages include:

▸ Long range: Up to 15 km line of sight 

▸ Low power consumption: Battery powered sensors can operate for years without replacement.

▸ High penetration: Sub-GHz (EU868) frequency bands penetrate better through building and industrial walls indoors than cellular bands.

▸ Scalable architecture: Thousands of end devices can be supported by a single gateway.

▸ License-free spectrum: No recurring cellular connectivity fees.

Deployed Architecture

The solution was based on Advantech’s LoRaWAN industrial enterprise gateway series:

Network Topology

Six WISE-6610P gateways were deployed in a non-overlapping manner to cover all required heat meters. The gateways also have integrated LNS, this means the system can utilize a bridged architecture and data from the sensors can be accessed locally (through Node-RED dashboards running on each individual gateway) as well as at a central location (sent seamlessly to the central SCADA/historian system of the facility using OPC-UA or MQTT as native functionality). This two-pronged approach leads to operational advantages: maintenance technicians have the ability to perform local verification of sensor readings through the web interface Node-RED dashboard directly on the gateway, and the central control room can see consolidated thermal energy data across the entire facility.

Results & Performance

• Downsizing of the infrastructure: From ~150 cellular routers to 6 LoRaWAN gateways + compact WISE-2200M modules.
• Connectivity Reliability: Reliable coverage also was obtained in harsh environment such as concrete room and steel door.
• Range Achievement: Up to 700 meters in the most adverse environment on 4-5 dBi external antennas.
• Data Collection: 15 minutes-based polling of inlet/outlet temperature and flow rate and cumulative energy readings of up to 15 min of 5 fields.
  

Local Data Access via Node-RED

The built-in LNS feature of WISE-6610P gateway, which enables the execution of local applications, is one of the significant benefits. The release consists of Node-RED-based dashboards, which enable real-time visualization of heat meter data at the gateway level. 

This allows:

▸Fast verification of data at site without access to central system. 

▸Installation assistance for troubleshooting and commissioning. 

▸Backup data visibility if you lose central connectivity temporarily (for fail-safe).

▸Reduced latency for time-sensitive operational decisions.

Business Impact

Shifts to cellular to LoRaWAN infrastructure were quantitatively beneficial in all the following ways:

▸ Reduced OPEX: Termination of around 150 cellular data plans and SIM card management. 

▸ Simplified maintenance: Six gateway locations concur with the 150+ distributed routers which need to be addressed one by one. 

▸ Future scalability: New points of measurement can be added with very little investment in infrastructure. 

▸ Faster troubleshooting: Access to local dashboard without relying to central systems for simple diagnosis and solutions.

Conclusion

This installation illustrates how LoRaWAN technology can effectively address connectivity issues traditionally found in cellular infrastructure within challenging factory environments. With Advantech’s comprehensive integrated LoRaWAN solution, the petrochemical plant was able to build a more dependable, maintainable and cost-effective heat metering infrastructure while also accessing and visualizing data at a local level. Due to the success of this rollout, LoRaWAN has become the preferred technology for future integration at the site of additional sensors such as tank level, environment and equipment condition.