Design and Implementation of Industrial Automatic Liquid Level Sensing and Control System

Abstract

Most homes, institutions and businesses in sub-Saharan Africa provide water for themselves as pipe-borne water from the public water supply system has become almost non-existent over the years. As a result, virtually every home, institution, and businesses rely on their water supply system popularly called ‘bore-hole’ fitted with water pumping machines which are either submersible or surface mount machines that extract groundwater and pump same into an overhead water storage tank from which water is delivered to users through a network of pipes. Because the water storage tank is usually overhead and difficult to access, one cannot tell when the water level/volume becomes too low to initiate pumping or when the tank is filled during pumping to avoid spillage which leads to loss of resources, and waste of energy. Thus, designing and constructing a system that continuously monitors the level/volume of water or any other liquid and automatically turns ‘ON/ OFF’ the water pump as a response to the measured level/volume without human intervention is imperative. This paper presents the design and construction of a Liquid level monitoring and control system that monitors the level of water in a tank, displays the various level via the LEDs on the display unit, and automatically cordons ‘ON/OFF’ an incorporated water pump whenever the level exceeds/drops below a predefined upper/lower threshold. The incorporation of an inhibitor switch, a feature that is absent in other designs, which enables switching between automatic/manual modes of operation makes this design a novelty.