EDITORS CHOICE
COOLING SYSTEM
ABB
COOLING TOWER OPTIMIZATION
Food and beverage production requires a
large range of temperatures. This means that
plants must have effective cooling systems
to deal with the excess heat. Removing
the excess heat from the system requires a
cooling tower, however, traditional designs
require frequent maintenance. Here Darcy
Simonis, food and beverage group vice
president at ABB, explains how to optimize
cooling towers.
Food and beverage manufacturers
understand that the industry is becoming
a constant production environ-ment,
especially with the expansion of
technologies like cold supply chains.
Businesses, therefore, require equipment
that can work constantly. However, when
producing for long periods of time machines
tend to overheat, meaning that to become
a constantly working operation cooling
systems must also work twenty-four hours
a day
Heating, cooling and pasteurizing are all
common steps in food and beverage. Each
one of these steps either directly or indirectly
produces large quantities of heat. Managing
this heat is a priority, because otherwise
equipment may be damaged through
overheating. As such, it is important to have
a cooling system that is reliable, requires
minimal maintenance and can extract heat at
a sufficient rate.
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PECM Issue 40
How to optimize cooling
Traditional fans generally use 1500 rpm
induction motors that connect to a
driveshaft that connects to a gear-box, the
gearbox then connects to the fan.
This makes the system prone to breakdowns
as there are many moving parts, also gearbox
maintenance is time consuming and, due
to the environment, oil leaks are com-mon.
To combat this modern cooling fans need
motors that can be mounted directly onto
the fan, while be-ing able to resist the
conditions within the cooling tower.
Many of these traditional motors can be
replaced with more efficient permanent
magnetic motors that can be directly
installed onto the fan. This reduces the
amount of parts in the system, limiting the
risk of break-downs.
They are also compact compared to
traditional cooling tower motors, reducing
the space required by the system.
Furthermore, the motors help optimize
cooling towers by reducing noise pollution
and as the motor is re-versable allows for the
fans to be used to prevent freezing during
the colder months of the year.
Adding extra functions like this means that
the higher efficiency of permanent magnetic
motors, especially at partial loads, in tandem
with the drive’s variable speed control ensure
fast running of the fans at the required speed
saving energy, reducing CO2 footprint and
lowering running costs.
Permanent magnetic motors from ABB can
also be installed with ACS880-01 industrial
drives that are built with cooling tower
application control programs. This allows
the drive to adjust the speed of the motors
to match the process demand, further
increasing energy savings while lowering
wear and tear rates. Meaning that cooling
towers will be able run for longer while
further reducing the amount of maintenance
required during its lifetime.
Overall, upgrading cooling tower systems
can lead to major savings and create a
platform for constant produc-tion that can
help drive business growth. Traditional
cooling systems, especially cooling fan
motors are no longer up to par with the
requirements from the system. Optimizing
them through the introduction of new
technology is the only way to improve
production.
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