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Saturn facility oil transfer automation system

Joseph, Nathan R.

The Saturn accelerator, owned by Sandia National Laboratories, has been in operation since the early 1980s and still has many of the original systems. A critical legacy system is the oil transfer system which transfers 250,000 gallons of transformer oil from outside storage tanks to the Saturn facility. The oil transfer system was iden- ti ed for upgrade to current technology standards. Using the existing valves, pumps, and relay controls, the system was automated using the National Instruments cRIO FGPA platform. Engineered safety practices, including a failure mode e ects analysis, were used to develop error handling requirements. The uniqueness of the Saturn Oil Automated Transfer System (SOATS) is in the graphical user interface. The SOATS uses an HTML interface to communicate to the cRIO, creating a platform independent control system. The SOATS was commissioned in April 2013.