Pictorial Offset: Stack Gas Monitoring and Reporting

Pictorial Offset (PO) is a large printing company in northern NJ. The noxious fumes that evolve from their printing presses are passed through a scrubber before being released to the atmosphere. The NJ EPA requires that stack gas effluents be monitored continuously and reported-on monthly. PO required a system that would acquire data from several stack gas sensors (i.e. NOx and CO) and oven temperature sensors, and log this data to disk for later use in creating a monthly EPA report.

The PAC SCADA Tool Kit, with its integrated Data Historian, was used as the platform for developing the LabVIEW based monitoring and reporting software. The PAC SCADA Tool Kit provided almost all of the Pictorial Offset requirements. A custom interface program was developed to acquire stack gas data from the PO gas (paper) recorder. Oven temperatures were acquired over the PO LAN, using National Instrument’s FieldPoint modules. Custom screens were developed to support, alarms, reporting and configuration. Sensor data was acquired at a once/second rate. The monthly reports required that monthly averages be calculated, for each important sensor being monitored, from the once/second data.