Sanut Dominicana is a Dominican Republic-based agribusiness company specialised in high-quality products for animal nutrition, fertilizers and veterinary medicine. The company also supplies raw materials and ingredients for feed production and provides technical advice to producers to improve farm performance and sustainability.

A key ingredient for the companies animal feed production is animal-derived fat, such as tallow and lard, which is stored in various approx. 8m / ~26.2 ft high tanks. To ensure well-orchestrated production processes, the customer needs to monitor the tank farm inventory.

Previously, the tank farm was monitored manually to collect data for the weekly production plan. This required personnel to climb the tanks daily with a tank gauging tape, exposing them to significant occupational safety risks. The measured levels were then converted using the tanks’ strapping tables.

This extremely impractical method was also very error-prone. Without continuous level measurement inside the tanks, pumps frequently ran dry, and overfilling occasionally occurred during truck unloading – an especially uncomfortable situation for the operator. The company therefore decided to automate tank farm inventory and implement continuous, state-of-the-art level measurement.

Having had positive experience with KROHNE level transmitters in the past, the customer decided to install 12 OPTIWAVE 1520 units. The compact 80 GHz radar level transmitter provides all the features required for professional inventory management of the tank farm. It is designed for reliable continuous level measurement in tanks up to 10 m / 32.8 ft high and can handle a wide variety of products, including poorly reflecting media such as animal fats or vegetable oil. Its antenna is made of FDA-compliant PVDF wetted material.

The 80 GHz radar was installed via a G1½ process connection into welded couplings on top of the tanks. It was also specially equipped with cable protection tubing, which was easily fixed using the G1 connection at the top of the device. For online monitoring and control of the tank farm, the KROHNE radars were connected to a PLC (peer-to-peer) and a SCADA system via the 4…20 mA/HART^® signal.

The OPTIWAVE 1520 was commissioned via Bluetooth^® using the OPTICHECK Level Mobile app. The app provides numerous templates for device configuration, including one for level measurement in vertical tanks. This allowed wireless device setup from the ground, without the need to stand directly next to the instruments. Only a few parameters, such as the measuring range and the distance to the tank bottom, had to be entered in the installation wizard.

Switching from manual tape-gauge level measurement to continuous 80 GHz radar measurement proved extremely beneficial for the customer’s tank inventory management. The OPTIWAVE 1520 enables real-time monitoring of tank levels, allowing for more reliable production planning and eliminating the risk of undersupply. The radar specifically prevents pumps from running dry and being damaged due to inaccurate or sporadic readings. It also prevents oversupply and spillage of difficult-to-handle animal fats, as the PLC can now automatically control tank filling once a defined threshold is exceeded and an alert is issued. Beyond process safety, occupational safety has been greatly enhanced. Service personnel no longer need to climb on top of tanks daily to manually measure levels, eliminating all associated live risks.

The OPTIWAVE 1520 operates drift-free, is unaffected by wind or weather, and features an IP68 protection rating against water and moisture ingress, ensuring low maintenance costs by design. Even device health checks can be performed safely from the ground, without the need to access tank roofs. Thanks to OPTICHECK technology built-in diagnostics, on-site verification and reporting of device health are possible via the OPTICHECK Level Mobile app and Bluetooth^®. A particular advantage is that – unlike other cost-effective 80 GHz radars in its class – the OPTIWAVE 1520 comes with HART^® protocol support included at no extra cost. This allows the operator to alternatively perform status checks and read error messages from the control room using HART^® commands, without any additional wiring. All these features contribute to an excellent price-performance ratio, which is highly valued by the customer.