Having achieved approval for the first set of NEON sensors, The Way To Go (TWTG) is now expanding its portfolio and has received IECEx / ATEX Zone 1 certification for both the NEON Vibration Sensor and the NEON Temperature Transmitter.
The new sensors address typical use cases within the oil and gas industry, such as receiving regular information about the vibration of rotating equipment to detect potential issues early and measuring the extreme temperatures within operational processes, via thermocouples. Being able to resolve these common and widespread challenges by utilising digital retrofitting solutions, enables operators to make previously innate objects smart.
The sensors are based on LoRaWAN as the communications backhaul, which according to a recent Gartner study, is on the brink of becoming the mainstream communication solution for industry.
Joost Peters, TWTG’s NEON product owner, is clearly enthusiastic about these new additions: “When looking at what is available in the market, our sensors are incredibly competitive. We can make sure that our customers’ working environments become safer places to work.”
He continues, “When a chemical plant for instance, wants to upgrade large amounts of existing assets to create a system that provides information faster and more reliably, they really only have three options: Replacing existing assets, employing more operators (who then have to manually check the assets), or by employing our NEON sensors, to retrofit industrial IoT sensors. Whilst the first and second options are cost intensive, the third option can be installed within minutes and wirelessly provides information about the health status of the assets for up to ten years. Operators can now monitor solutions, based on the data and the condition that the assets communicate back to them. This is how customers can future proof their sites easily and at minimal cost.”
The versatility of these new sensors allows TWTG to develop new additions to the product line faster and are therefore able to gain subsequent intrinsic safety certifications more swiftly. John Tillema, who as CTO is responsible for the new product roadmap, called it a “fast track to putting our customers’ requirements into reality” by having a platform that can integrate new and if needed, third party sensors into already certified devices. TWTG is providing customers with the ability to harvest multiple data points.
Following the European certification, these sensors will now undergo the certifications for the US, with Asia to follow.
