The Application and Research of the Liquid Level Control Technology Used in

Mineral Flotation Process which Based on the Modbus Communication

Protocol
Zhaoyong Li 1, Shouming Zhang 1, Jianliang Lang 1 ,Hualiang Shao 2
1. Kunming University of Science and Technology, Yunnan 650500; 2. Yuhang TCM hospital, Hangzhou 311106
E-mail: zsmingxm@sina.com

Abstract: Flotation level control is a very important part in the flotation mineral separation process. This article
introduces one application of the Modbus RTU protocol which used in the flotation liquid level control system, discusses
the S7-300's programming ideas and methods which based on the form of communication, and optimize the
communication strategy. The practical application shows that the system of flotation liquid level control which based on
Modbus RTU protocol can get better control effect, and ensure a good target for the mineral separation.
Key Words: Modbus RTU Protocol, Liquid-level Control, UDC3200, CP341, The Flotation Process

the rate of communication, so installed two CP341, and 17

branches for each one.
1 INTRODUCTION
The flotation is the most important way of separating For convenient operation and monitoring, it is equipped
mineral, it had been widely used in the separation of the with ADVANTECH touch screen which is connected with
metal minerals and non-metallic mineral. The technical an Ethernet interface of CP343-1 on the S7-300 PLC by
target of flotation products is limited by the mineral industrial twisted pair cable in the PLC control room.
properties, flotation reagents, equipment and process Another interface is connected with the central control
operating parameters and so on. The automatic control room switches, and was assigned a different IP. Ultimately,
technology is the key technology for the process of flotation it achieves centralized monitoring the multiple workshops.
except the technological innovation, to ensure the quality of The control network structure of the overall system is
the produ- ct and reduce the production cost[1]. It is shown in figure 1.
important to keep the pulp level of the flotation groove
stability for the flotation product properties and the normal
operation of the process, which play an important role in
increasing the production target. The control effect has a
direct influence on the target of the level of mineral and the
recovery rate and so on. Therefore, it is needed to use an
advanced automatic control equipment and build an
advanced stable control system, then to achieve automatic
monitoring the level of liquid. The flotation worshop of
YUNNAN CHIHONG Huize zinc and germanium mineral
separation factory has been using the UDC3200 process
controller which manufactured by the Honeywell company,
and the system realizes the data transmission and remote
monitoring purpose through communication with the
S7-300 PLC.

2 THE COMPOSITION OF THE HARDWA-

RE SYSTEM
In the flotation process control project of Huize mineral
separation factory, the S7-300 PLC is the controlling center
for controlling the system, it collects each status signal
which yield by liquid level controller and sends the
real-time control command. The PLC is the modbus
communication master station with configurable the
module CP34 1 and Dongle[2]. The UDC3200 process
controller support two kinds of communication: Modbus
RTU and Ethernet.This project chooses the Modbus for the
branch communication component. There are 34 UDC
process controllers, taking into account the factors of the
communication lines and the number of station will affect
Corresponding author: Shouming Zhang, Tel:+86-13033381981.
Fig 1.The control network structure of the overall system
The liquid level monitoring configuration screen in the
central control room and touch screen control as shown in
figure 2.
3 THE SYSTEM COMMUNICATION REA-
LIZATION
3.1 Modbus Protocol
Modbus, a kind of bus protocol, is the first real used in the
industrial field. Modbus supports a variety of electrical
interface, such as RS-232, the RS-485, etc. and can
transmission in various media, such as twisted-pair cable,
optical fiber, wireless and so on. Modbus protocol is the
application layer message transfer protocol on the 7th layer
of the OSI model, it provided client/server communication

978-1-4673-5534-6/13/$31.00 2013
c IEEE 3603
on connected different types of bus or network equipment.
There has two kinds of transfer mode in Modbus system:
ASCII (American information exchange code) and RTU
(remote terminal unit), each Modbus system can only use
one model, not combination[3]. The definition of the two
kinds of modes shows on table 1 and table 2[4].
Fig 2. The liquid level monitoring configuration screen in the central
control room and touch screen control
Table 1. ASCII mode
Table 2. RTU mode
The ASCII format stipulated that each of the 8 bytes as two
ASCII character to transmit in the messages, and used
LRC(logical redundancy check)check the data.The
advanta- ges of this format is that the interval of the
character's sending time can reach 1 second without
mistakes, and the disadvantage is that the communication
rate is slower than the RTU mode. The RTU format is
prescribed that every eight bytes contains two about 4 digit
hexadecimal informa- tion in the messages, for the best use
of space of each bit, and improve the communication
efficiency.
This system uses the RTU transmission mode. The Modbus
RTU communication protocol uses the master-slave way to
transmit data. In the transmission process, the host station is
active role who send request message to the subordinate
station, and the subordinate return a response message.
When the host station send data, all of the subordinate stati-
on will receive the information, but only the proper address
station will response, so it is very important to distinguish
the address. The Modbus protocol provide 3. 5 frame free
time between two packets[5], and at the same time, all of
the subordinate station should do the preparation for
receiving, once the master station has a packet, the slave
3604 2013 25th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC)
station imme- diately receive the data. The first frame of
messages which send by the host station is the address
frame, and the address field is 1b. The slave device address
could be 0-247 (Dec). The subordinate station records the
address and determine to perform the function. To use the
function code control to exchange data in Modbus system,
which is the 2nd byte of each transmitted communication
message frame. The master station send the request which
use the function code to tell slave-machine what to do; and
the subordinate station response the request, who return a
function code like the host sending which shows that the
subordinate station has response the master station and has
done the operation. The master station or the subordinate
station uses CRC-16 check method to distinguish the
receiving information. The error detection domain content
is obtained by detecting whether the message's content is
long or not. CRC domain attached to the messages' end,
added from low byte to high byte.
3.2 UDC3200 and CP341
The UDC3200 process controller contains infrared
configur- ation interface, general digital/analog input,
multiple signal output and mathematical algorithm and so
on, which provide accurate and reliable control for different
applications. In this example, the UDC3200 control the
number of the admission through contorlling the pneumatic
valve which decided by the number of output analog which
generated by PID calculate the feedback singal got from
detecting the liquid level, and then achieve a relative
stability liquid level in the floation slot.It sopports two
kinds fieldbus protocol: Modbus RTU and Ethernet 10
Base-TCP/IP. In this case, it chooses the way of connecting
the RS422/485 interface of CP341 module with UDC3200.
It can reach as many as 31 station if the line is short. The
request and the responsive message format of UDC3200
were shown in table 3 and table 4. The function code
14(Hex) is used to read the equipment general parameters,
and the subordinate station should be return the length and
content of the register data or the other messages.
The CP341 module is a serial communication module of
SIEMENS S7-300/400 PLC, which hardware interface can
use RS232, TTY, RS422/485, software protocol have some
kinds, such as Modbus Master/Slave, 3694(R), RK512 and
ASCII. The RS422/485 which support Modbus RTU's
remote terminal can communicat at most 1200m,and the
electrical in- terface is D type with 15 port. The S7-300/400
who used CP341 can exchange data with a variety of serial
communic- ation equipment, such as simultaneous
connection of mult- iple frequency converter or intelligent
instrument, etc. This system choose the CP341 module with
RS485 interface, and install the Dongle to drive software
protocol. To set the parameter, the Modbus bus
transportable rate and frame character structure in STEP7
parameters tools.In this example , set the transportable rate
at 9.6 Kbits/s; for the frame character, 1 bit for start byte, 8
bit for data byte, 1 bit for even parity byte, and 1 bit for stop
byte;the electrical interace is half-duplex of RS485;the rest
is default settings. To set each subordinate station interface
must consistent with the host station.
Table 3.the Format of request messages

Table 4.the Format of responsive message
The CP341 use the function block FB7"P_RCV_RK"to
receive data and the FB8"P_SND_RK" to send data. In the
client program, there is a background data block in
FB7/FB8 which can be revised unconditionall and the way
of sending or receiving data can be circulating or time
driven[6]. FB8 is based on a rising edge for working: work
a time when meet a rising edge, then send a request packet
to the bus. Therefore, a trigger code segment must be
designed for constantly reset the parameters REQ of FB8
between 0 and 1 to work normally in the program [2,7] .
3.3 Modbus RTU Communication Design and Achieve
It is worth to discuss the problem that how to effectively
switching the subordinate station address which set for the
S7-300 PLC communicate with multiple subordinate
stations.From the design perspective,the commnication
process is achieved by calling the function block FB7 and
FB8 uninterrupted. About the project, for calling FB7 and
FB8 34 times to write two groups of 17 communication
blocks which set the communication address by liquid level
controller and then set this time regulation communication
parameter, the next is to execute the 17 communication
blocks circulating to realize uninterrupted communication
in each group of liquid level controller. From the operation
mode of program to see that the structure of program is
simple, the program parameter and process is clearly. But it
was found that the process of carring out program is
miscellaneous and the Modbus subordinate station response
time is longer than the time of executing each
communication program block which often only a few or
dozens of milliseconds when PLC circulating carry out on
OB1, and the response time of each subordinate station is
between in hundreds of millisecond or a few seconds due to
the different actual situation (interference, cable impedance,
etc) after the experiment[8]. If a communication block
execute over but response not, it can cause the whole
communication network error response when the next
communication block is running, and then the whole
communication process will be interrupt.
Therefore, it calls a single block circulation to modify the
preset parameters of communication parameter configura-
tion block for switching communication block address. To
test the end bit and the fault bit in the each of circulation. It
can call a parameter-modify program to increase the
parame- ter address of the current communication block
2013 25th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC)
when a com- munication calls or the detect fault last for
more than 4 seconds, and then do the next calls until the
prarmeter address increased to 17. Initialize the parameter
address for 1, to finish the all polling.By this it can increase
the commun- ication efficiency of the whole Modbus
network. The practise of repairing equipment shows that
the program can judge the fault subordinate station
correctly [9].
It is desigend for building data communication with 17
UDC3200 that to realize the circulating demand on the
Modbus RTU master inS7-300 PLC. To use the same data
source block DB202 storage the command which send from
PLC to all subordinate stations, and the data block DB203
storage the response message about the subordinate station.
It is possible that only to modify the corresponding device
address, function code, data source address, data quantity
and CRC check code about data block for different address
of liquid level controller. The sending function block FC21
call FB8 to send data, and ask the DB200 to save the request
messages. The receiving function block FC23 call FB7 to
receive data, and ask the DB201 to save the response
message. The circulating interrupted block OB35 execute
the command which is ordered by number increasing from
1-34 to complete the PLC polling. The program flow
diagram is shown in figure 3.
The PLC collect each liquid level signal of floation tank in
flotation process of the liquid level control system. The
PLC as the Modbus host computer get the correct data
which collected by the field instruments after the program
operation. In this project, The monitoring data is
transmitted with industrial Ethernet which uninvolves
Modbus RTU salve protocol between the the S7-300 PLC
and the central control room[10]. The following is the
reading and writing UDC3200 data program of STEP7
which follow the Modbus RTU protocol.
The reading program:
L "Slave_address1"
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Slave_address //Slave adress
L W#16#3
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Function_code //Function Code
L 0
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Reg_startadr //Starting Address
L 22 // LEN is only 22
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Reg_anzahl //reg_anzahl
UC "Execute Send Jobs(1)" //Call of FC for executing
SEND-Jobs
UC "Execute Receive Jobs(1)" //Call of FC for executing
RCV –Jobs
The writting program:
L "Slave_address1"
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Slave_address //Slave adress
L 6
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Function_code //Function Code
L "SND6_Reg_address1"
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Reg_startadr //Starting Address
L "WriteREG1.V"
T "SOURCE_DB(1)".Reg_anzahl //Modify Value
UC "Execute Send Jobs(1)" //Call of FC for executing
SEND-Jobs
3605

Fig 3. The program flow diagram
3.4 CRC Checking Realize
It is very important to check message frame CRC for the
host station and the slave. The program of check CRC is the
prerequisite of the communication program operation
successful. The salve RTU station can correctly answer the
request of the master and the master also receive data
correctly if the result of CRC checking. The CRC domain is
2 bytes, including 16 bit binary value. At first, the CRC call
the 16 bit register which filled with "1", then call a process
to deal the value of each register which is continuous 8 bit
in the message. Only the 8 bit of each character have a good
effective to CTC, not the start bit, not the end bit, not the
parity bit. Every 8 bit character do a or operation with the
content of register when the CRC execute, and the result
move to the lowest effective bit with o filled in the highest
effective bit. To test the LSB, if the result is 1, the register's
value deal or with the preset value; if 0, do nothing. The
whole process will repeat 8 times.
3606 2013 25th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC)
The next repeat it when the last bit finished. The final value
of register is the value of CRC which have executed the
command of message[11].
4 Conclusion
In this project, it achieves stable communication between
the process controller and CP341 by the optimized design
based on Modbus protocol. Huize concentrator practice
shows that the set of level control and technical solutions
used in the flotation units fully able to meet the
technological requirements of the zinc germanium ore
flotation, equipment operation is reliable, accurate slurry
liquid level to ensure a good index of mineral separation.
The next step is to design a set of algorithms, completion of
the PID parameters self tuning in order to achieve more
excellent control effect.
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