APRIL 2013 GROUND HANDLING INTERNATIONAL French connecting


On to France, where Guinault-Lebrun has had a busy time, too. The enterprise has noted a high demand for frequency converters and air conditioning units and it has registered increasing interest on the part of the major players like Emirates, Air France, Malaysian Airlines and Lufthansa, together with airports like Munich, Frankfurt, Paris CDG and Charleroi for the optimised TCO and associated technology for it. Because the investment cost is but a small part of the TCO, the supplier’s customers say that they are ready to pay more to save over the whole lifetime of the unit. Guinault-Lebrun’s commitment to performance and its transparency are appreciated within the sector. Globally, sales reached €33m for 2012 compared to €25m for 2011, and the continuous growth is in line with its expectations. According to the company’s Sales Director, François Blanchard, over the last 18 months Guinault-Lebrun has been fully redesigning the air conditioning range in order to offer the ACU for business and regional aircraft up to the A380. Guinault-Lebrun’s GF65 model is the only model in the market capable of supplying the flow of 6.5 kilogrammes per


second for A380 application. Guinault-Lebrun also feels that a 150 tonne capacity ACU used in Asia is totally different from a 150 tonne ACU employed in the Middle East. Effectively, a very high climatic temperature has many consequences on ACU design, especially on the condenser side. For this reason the Guinault–Lebrun design is easily recognisable from its totally separated condenser sited atop the ACU in order to maximise its efficiency in very extreme climatic conditions. The use of a screw compressor allows single compressor use for bigger capacity, thereby increasing the MTBF and reliability.


In 2012, Guinault also developed a new design of air start unit for very cold climatic conditions (-40/45°C). In this range of temperature, the use of a traditional pneumatic controller (by-pass) system is not recommended because of the problem of repeated frost. The electronic regulation technology used on this ASU avoids this problem as no by-pass pneumatic controller is employed. Adding some heating elements to the ASU to ensure the protection of engine and compressor blocks allows Guinault to reach the above- mentioned low temperature capability, such as is found in Russia and Canada. In 2011, Guinault developed its own chassis


ASU & GPU 55


for customers who needed a truck-mounted GPU, ASU or ACU. The first hydrostatic truck was developed for an Air France customer in order to reduce the height of passenger bridge clearance. However, this design interested another customer for a different reason: this hydrostatic truck has a very low cost in terms of maintenance. There is no need for special tools or software or truck dealer intervention. The truck is driven by a simple Deutz air- cooled industrial engine of 56KW. The fuel consumption is consequently really low and it can be driven like a baggage tractor, without the need for a special licence. In the future, the quantity of combustion engine-driven equipment will decrease and will be steadily replaced by electrically- driven equipment. As a consequence, Guinault has been developing a new range of 400Hz frequency converter models of 90KVA capacity, based on its military converters: the first models were delivered during 2012. This converter can be fixed (for airport infrastructure installation) or trailer mounted for easy manoeuvrability. François poses an interesting question at this juncture: did you know that electrical pollution is also a problem? “Everybody is taking care of diesel pollution, but electrical pollution also


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