Grant Instruments' Squirrels play major Environmental Monitoring role in Industrial Manufacturing Sector

The versatile Grant Instruments Squirrel SQ800 data logger is playing a vital environmental monitoring role in the industrial manufacture of paper, food, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and photographic chemicals.

Omex Environmental manufactures Magmex, which is used to correct and maintain the Ph balance of water used in critical manufacturing processes.

Omex uses the Squirrels to monitor the acidity levels of water used in manufacturing and to keep a close eye on the tank levels of Magmex at customers' manufacturing sites.

The easy-to-use Squirrels have made it possible for Omex to monitor Magmex levels in factories all over the UK. Using telemetry, Omex headquarters in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, are able to contact the Squirrels remotely via GSM modems and view what is happening to the data. The Squirrels enable Omex to take away from customers the headache of monitoring supplies and re-ordering the chemical to ensure production is not interrupted.

The on-line monitoring system enables Omex to closely monitor the automated rate at which the customer is using Magmex. This can provide customers with a vital early warning of problems in the manufacturing process.

Before the telemetry facility was put in place, about 12 months ago, Omex staff were required to visit customers bi-weekly to monitor Magmex levels. Now they simply dial up the Squirrel and interrogate its sophisticated software on-line.

Omex Environmental Project Manager Philip Sheppardson, said: "The small, unobtrusive Squirrel SQ800s are robust and easy to use and the software is excellent. We can leave a Squirrel attached to a customer's manufacturing plant with full confidence that it will be trouble free.

"The Squirrels enable us to take the re-ordering headache away from customers and the logger can act as an early warning of problems in the system. The Squirrels also enable us to precisely match our production of Magmex with customer demand."