Rotork electric valve control
contributes to Coca-Cola
Enterprises environmental
improvements
Rotork CVA electric control valve
actuation technology is helping Co-
ca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) to increase
efficiency and reduce energy costs at
its Wakefield production plant in the
UK.
An important part of the plan involves
saving the on-going cost of provi-
ding and maintaining an instrument
air supply for traditional pneumatic
control valve actuation. This is being
implemented by the introduction of
the Rotork CVA control valve actuator
to perform modulating and failsafe
valve duties.
A recent example is on the production
line where the adoption of Rotork
CVA technology for a demanding
valve duty has considerably reduced
Above left, a Rotork engineer demonstrates the improved control valve performance illustrated by
the Rotork CVA actuator’s datalogger. Top right, These two graphs show the improved positional
accuracy of the CVA actuator in comparison with the pneumatic actuator in the production mode.
Above right, These two graphs show the improved positional accuracy of the CVA actuator in
comparison with the pneumatic actuator in the CIP (Clean in Place) mode.
the cost of energy consumption when
compared with traditional pneumatic
actuation with no loss of performan-
any leaks in the system.
ce. “Up to now, electrically actuated val-
Andy Reynolds, Automation Engineer maintain good pressure control in the
at the Wakefield plant, explains: bottle filling machine. Rotork were
“We wanted to remove the need for
compressed air as much as possible
in the area and reduce costs. Based
on average air usage of 2m3/hr for
ves could not respond fast enough to
confident that their CVA actuator
would not only give a similar per-
formance to our existing valve, but
would also be cheaper to run.
a 3” control valve at £0.05 per m3, “To prove this, the performance of the
the running cost would be £870 per existing pneumatic control valve on
annum. The CVA actuator, using an the main product feed into the filling
average of 10 Watts at £0.15/kW, machine was first monitored and
would cost £13 for the same period. recorded. The CVA actuator was then
This represents a minimum saving of fitted to the same valve and connec-
£857 per annum per valve, as this fi- ted to the existing 4-20mA control
gure does not take into consideration signal from the PLC.
“After running and monitoring the
CVA actuator in a 24-7 operation for
one month, the results from the two
actuators were compared. The graphs
clearly show that in production mode
the CVA performs equally well, if not
better than the pneumatic actuator.
However, when in Clean in Place (CIP)
cleaning mode, the performance
of the CVA is much better than the
pneumatic. This is because the CVA
actuator does not overshoot the set
point like the pneumatic actuator does
when the set point is lower and back
pressure in the circuit is higher when
in CIP mode.”
www.rotork.com
FDPP - www.fdpp.co.uk 19