Plant Automation

LERC is focussing to develop new products and technologies for the LPG Bottling Plants so as to increase the plant productivity and also to cope with the growing technologies abroad for import substitution.

Some of the developments of LERC for the use of LPG Bottling Plants is listed below:

1. Equipments for LPG Plant Development – Establish PARC and Mechatronics Lab

It has been envisaged by LERC to develop quality LPG Plant equipments indigenously, as presently there are only limited reliable vendors, mainly foreign vendors, who are manufacturing and supplying such equipments and that too at exorbitant prices. These indigenous equipment are for use in LPG Bottling Plants during filling of LPG Cylinders.
Mechatronics Lab essential for development and testing of open technology electronic plant automation equipment in non-hazardous environment has been set up at LERC.

The current projects which have been undertaken under this category is as below with several other projects in the pipeline.

a. Machine Vision System for Tareweight Data Capture for LPG Cylinder – TAREVISION

LERC has developed a camera based machine vision system for cylinder tare weight data capture which is presently manually keyed-in at bottling plants for filling using electronic carousals which is an error prone and slow process.

This system has been developed using non-proprietary open technology architecture and is a demonstration of indigenous capabilities thus making it an excellent import substitute product. The system has a read accuracy of about 99% which is better than imported system.

The camera is used to capture the image on the tareweight painted on the LPG Cylinder from the top, enhance the image and then convert to data after employing multiple machine vision algorithms i.e particle removal, grey scale morphology etc for image correction and pattern recognition and transmit the data to the filling carousal.

2. Valve Retrieval System

LERC has developed a Valve Retrieval System for use of the LPG Bottling Plants.
The objective of this development is to extend the life of the S C Valve by way of cleaning the accumulated dirt in the valve internals.
This product has been patented by LERC and the same is being successfully used by LPG Bottling Plants all across the nation.

3. Stay Plate Straightener

LERC has developed a Stay Plate Straightener based on pneumatic as well as electrically operated systems to facilitate easy removal of stay plate’s bends of cylinders.
The same has been successfully implemented in the LPG Bottling Plants nationwide.

4. Leak Detection and Auto Cut-Off System for LPG Installation

LERC has successfully developed and installed a system for detection and indication of leaks and automatic cut-off of LPG supply at select Oil Industry locations covering a range of Commercial and Reticulated type of Installations.

5. LPG Density Meter

LERC has designed and developed a portable, accurate and handy LPG density meter to measure the density of LPG at Bottling Plants.
This development has been successfully implemented in the LPG Bottling Plants.

6. Rubber Components

LERC has developed a set of indigenous rubber components to be used in LPG filling guns used in the LPG Bottling Plants for filling LPG Cylinders.
The same has resulted in increased life of components and increased productivity of plants.