INCREASING EFFICIENCY
ROTORK
ROTORK ELECTRIC VALVE CONTROL
CONTRIBUTES TO COCA-COLA ENTERPRISES
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS
Rotork CVA electric control valve
actuation technology is helping Coca-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 providing
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 the cost of
energy consumption when compared with
traditional pneumatic actuation with no
loss of performance.
Andy Reynolds, Automation Engineer at
the Wakefield plant, explains:
“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 a 3” control valve
at £0.05 per m3, the running cost would
be £870 per annum. The CVA actuator,
using an average of 10 Watts at £0.15/kW,
would cost £13 for the same period. This
represents a minimum saving of £857 per
annum per valve, as this figure does not
take into consideration any leaks in the
system.
“Up to now, electrically actuated valves
could not respond fast enough to maintain
good pressure control in the bottle filling
machine. Rotork were confident that their
CVA actuator would not only give a similar
performance to our existing valve, but
would also be cheaper to run.
“To prove this, the performance of the
existing pneumatic control valve on the
main product feed into the filling machine
was first monitored and recorded. The CVA
actuator was then fitted to the same valve
and connected to the existing 4-20mA
control signal from the PLC.
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“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