Industrietaucher
Success Story: decompression chamber

Under water, below ground, under pressure

A decompression chamber or hyperbaric chamber is a room for preventing and treating decompression sickness – also known as "diver's disease" – using hyperbaric oxygen therapy. JUMO's control technology helps the Dutch company IHC Hytech B. V. to equip hyperbaric systems for the treatment of divers and tunnel workers with vital oxygen.

Task

In saturation systems and decompression chambers, different values have to be measured, monitored, and recorded. These include in particular the amount of oxygen, the pressure, the temperature, and the humidity. Measurands, which are calculated from the measured values, are also of vital importance here. For example, the oxygen partial pressure is based on the measurands pressure and oxygen content.

Another requirement was that the measured values had to be able to trigger an optical and acoustic alarm, which also had to feature a mute function.

Instead of the conventional indicating devices a comprehensive system for carrying out the calculations, data processing, and visualization had to be devised. This system needed to be easy to handle and not require any lengthy programming. Furthermore, it needed to be reliable, safe, and stable to meet the demands of the maritime and petrochemical markets.



Decompression chamber from IHC Hytech B.V. © IHC Hytech B.V.

Solution approach

Together with IHC Hytech B.V. the optimum solution was found: a paperless recorder from the JUMO LOGOSCREEN range. These are reliable devices for monitoring and recording the measured values. In addition to its analog and digital inputs the JUMO LOGOSCREEN also offers an array of universal measurement inputs. This degree of versatility is helpful for IHC Hytech B.V. when using it in different systems. The recorder also has math and logic modules with which the aforementioned requirements were able to be implemented. The math module enables the calculation of resulting values using the measured values from different sensors such as the oxygen partial pressure previously mentioned. The logic module triggers an alarm, if requested, when certain limit values have been reached.

Also, IHC Hytech B.V. uses digital devices from the JUMO diraTRON and diraVIEW ranges, which enable the temperature and pressure to be clearly displayed and controlled. The matrix display also provides the user with additional text-based information such as whether the cooling or heating is active.

Hyperbaric chamber for tunnel boring machines © IHC Hytech B.V.

Hyperbaric chamber for tunnel boring machines © IHC Hytech B.V.

JUMO diraVIEW und LOGOSCREEN in a decompression chamber © IHC Hytech B.V.

JUMO diraVIEW und LOGOSCREEN in a decompression chamber © IHC Hytech B.V.

Project outcome

With intelligent measurement data recording and evaluation JUMO was able to fulfil the requirements of IHC Hytech B.V. In addition, the simple programming of the system enables the quick creation of new projects with a few simple steps. Another advantage is that the configuration data can be transferred via USB flash drive so that the obligatory programming with a laptop is no longer necessary. The simple programming concept of the JUMO diraTRON and diraVIEW also made a great impression. This concept saved considerable time – as was already the case with JUMO LOGOSCREEN.