As the cannabis industry scales to larger systems automation becomes more necessary and justified. However, if done wrong it can be extremely dangerous. It is critical that these three things be addressed if you are going to automate.
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Does your system default to a safe state when power is lost? A member here this week said that when he lost air supply his valve automatically opens and can cause a rapidly over pressurized separator vessel. Yikes!
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Are failsafes like emergency relief valves or redundant systems present?
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Are you using safety relays, interlocks and safety PLC modules or are system critical components just going through a normal PLC or PC? A PLC and PC do not contain integrated safety functions that can trigger events in case of a component failure or power loss.
Lastly, to decide if these things are worth doing consider that RISK = (IMPACT * PROBABILITY) / COST. So if you lose power once a year are your people and plant at a high risk or will you maybe lose a batch of trim?
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I’m not seeing anything to indicate that it was automation that went sideways in the linked article.
just
The 28-year-old man was killed in the explosion, which is believed to have been caused by a boiler.
and
Gardai have said that the cannabis factory was a sophisticated operation. and they are now investigating if there is a link between the operation and the explosion.
is there something I’m missing?
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No, I just wanted to link to an article that showed how things can be dangerous. Generally speaking a properly designed system should not blow up, but still you can’t combat all human errors. I removed the link so it does not detract from the broader point. Thanks.
To clarify, there are differing levels of automation. Anything that has a machine do the work is a form of automation. On one end of the scale you have a valve that is controlled remotely and on the other end you have lights out manufacturing. When you put a device in between the person and the machine we have to make sure the device is correct and behaves properly when we are not there.
removing the monkey from the equation it almost always a safety feature in my opinion. we are unreliable, capricious and error prone.
making sure that the device that is put in charge instead fails gracefully is certainly very important when playing with many of the extraction methods we use, and I thank you on behalf of the community for coming in and sharing your expertise.
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