The fans play a key role in most of the technological processes, eg supplying air to the furnaces, cooling or drying the processed raw materials. The efficiency of the fans themselves is largely dependent on the load, and the technical condition of these machines has a huge impact on the level of power consumption and efficiency. The stable operation of the fans is therefore associated not only with operational efficiency but also with energy efficiency. In the presented example, it was important for the customer to support the improvement of machine operational efficiency, and any loss of efficiency was associated with huge financial losses.
BACKGROUND
A client’s fan cools a raw material playing a key role in a heavy industry production process.
MACHINE
The fan is driven by a motor with the rated power of 270 kW, fed with 6 kV medium voltage and characterized by the rotational speed of 996 rpm.
CLIENT’S PROBLEM
When the fan is stopped the cooling process efficiency decreases, thus, the raw material does not achieve the designed temperature values. Moreover, the client faces standard operational issues occurring in fans, i.e. wear of bearings, misalignment and imbalance.
SUGGESTION BY ELMODIS
Having carried out a site inspection, as a solution we have suggested a configuration of the system that enables measurement of voltage by means of voltage dividers, current measurement and the use of additional system of sensors: key phasor, sensor of bearing temperature, vibration parameters – 4 channels.
CLIENT’S PERSPECTIVE
This configuration of the system enables the client to access the operational indexes i.e. the use of time, the availability of machine, average load, power and energy. Additionally, the system provides diagnostics correlated with the condition of the machine. The proposed configuration allows correlation of electrical and diagnostic measurements that enables connection of the machine condition (e.g. load) to the wear level of its individual components.
ADVANTAGES OF USING ELMODIS SYSTEM
The system provides information which enables the client to take right decisions affecting the availability of the machine. Furthermore, Elmodis significantly facilitates and accelerates detection of defects to the machine at the early stage of their development and as a result helps to prevent unexpected failures.
