Sustainability Through Energy Management
09/02/2023 Turck Banner Ltd
Sustainability doesn’t have to come at a cost, in fact many companies are finding that their initiatives are saving them money. Turck Banner have identified areas where they can assist companies in saving costs as well as becoming more sustainable. They have broken these areas down into three broad categories. Energy management, product efficiency and supply chain management. Here we will look at three different applications in the energy management category; heat management in mobile equipment, cabinet monitoring in electric vehicle charging and air flow management at Lawton Yarns.
The enormous increase in energy costs has focused everyone’s minds on their energy bills. At home, we often have to put up with just turning things off for periods of time, as the cost of replacing them with a more efficient item outweighs any savings. However, in the manufacturing industry, an intelligent redesign of the final product, focusing on heat and power consumption, is a viable proposition that can yield savings for both manufacturer and customer.
A large manufacturer of mobile equipment with worldwide customers faced the challenge of the equipment often operating in extreme temperatures. To protect internal components, the control cabinets required both heating and cooling. By providing control systems with an operating temperature range of -40 to +70 °C and a protection class of IP67, not only was the requirement for heating and cooling eliminated, but also the cabinet itself. This resulted in reducing the overall power requirements of the vehicle, the weight and space required for the heating and cooling equipment, as well as the weight and space needed for the control cabinet. The reduction in weight and size also has an ongoing cost saving in fuel and wear and tear of the vehicle. An added benefit of no control cabinet is that the control equipment is much more accessible, making repairs quicker and easier to perform whilst the vehicle is in the field.
Electric Vehicle Charging points are rapidly becoming a critical part of the country’s infrastructure. Maintaining them in good working order is a particular challenge, as they are remote from the provider, and customers get very disgruntled when one is not functioning. The cabinets can be subjected to both accidental damage and vandalism. Internal components may also fail over time.
By including a data logging cabinet monitor which can detect conditions likely to result in a failure, an early warning can be sent to the provider. The conditions monitored are: whether the cabinet door is correctly closed, humidity from water ingress, light entering through a damaged casing and temperature generated by the charging components. Data logging and internal trend processing result in the warning usually being sent before the charger fails, thus allowing maintenance to be planned for maximum efficiency and minimal cost. Repairing the charger before catastrophic failure is both less expensive and reduces scrap. Customers are also happier with greater charger availability.
Monitoring the flow of liquid and gaseous media has many benefits, ranging from simply knowing how much is being used, to identifying leaks and predictive maintenance. In your home a single dripping tap or toilet overflow wastes about 5500 litres of water per year.
Established over 120 years ago, Lawton Yarns are one of the few remaining yarn and wool makers for the carpet industry. As many of their machines are quite old, modernising them is extremely difficult. In the process of winding yarn onto spools, huge quantities of air are used to stop broken threads from jamming the machines. By detecting a thread break and only producing air when it is needed, they were able to save £76K per year with an ROI of only 9 months. The machines, originally, had no data capabilities but we were able to easily capture data from the sensors and inverter drives then pass this data to the cloud, where simple analysis identifies air leaks, bearing wear and other trends which allowed predictive maintenance to further reduce their costs.
These are just three examples where careful investment in the right products can have a significant impact on both short and long term savings, at the same time making the product or process more sustainable.
Print this articleFor more information, please contact:
Ian Manning
Turck Banner Ltd
Blenheim House
Blenheim Court
Wickford
Essex
SS11 8YT
Tel: +44 (0)1268 578888
Email: enquiries@turckbanner.com
Web: https://www.turckbanner.co.uk
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