COMPRESSED AIR
GLOBAL DRINKS MANUFACTURER CUTS AIR AND INEFFICIENCIES
W
hen a 40 bar turbo compressor situated within an internationally renowned British-based producer of soft drinks broke down, it was faced with two choices: repair or reconfigure. Choosing the latter, the producer found that the old proverb ‘as one door closes, another opens’ proved true. Founded in the late 1930s by an entrepreneurial chemist, Britvic – formerly British Vitamin Products Company – established a reputation for producing fruit juices as an affordable source of vitamins during the Great Depression. Maintaining an operation of this scale requires vast amounts of compressed air. So, when a 40 bar turbo compressor, which was contributing to a three- compressor configuration including two Gardner Denver oil-free 40-bar WH29 units at the firm’s plant in Kylemore, Ireland, failed – an issue that coincided with another site’s closure in Norwich, England – its retained contractor, KSM Engineering, presented an option that would see the relocation and reconfiguration of its remaining Norwich assets at the Kylemore site. This move would not only mean that the 40 bar turbo would no longer be required, but also the contractor believed it would improve the compressed air system’s efficiency considerably.
MANUAL INTERVENTION
With two factors at play – the closure of the Norwich site and the 40-bar turbo compressor’s failure – it was decided that the compressor should be repaired and then held in plan as a backup unit only. After all, it was understood that whilst the asset was highly efficient when run at 100 per cent and fully utilised, the very nature of the PET blow moulding facility, where the air demand profile rapidly changes from high to low, was leading to volatility when the unit was only partially loaded.
This volatility was even affecting CMC’s AIRMATICSTM control solution, which Britvic had in place to manage the regular loading and unloading of the two WH29 units. Due to the 40-bar turbo’s inability to handle regular fluctuations in loading and unloading cycles – the very thing that AIRMATICSTM is designed to do by ensuring that compressors under its management only load and unload according to demand – it was excluded from the system’s management profile. So that AIRMATICSTM could run as planned and manage the two WH29 units during weekends, when air demand was low, the site’s team would have to switch off the turbo so that it could be bypassed to enable AIRMATICSTM to run as designed.
This manual intervention proved to be an effective workaround, however, it highlighted further flaws in a system that otherwise would have run efficiently and automatically under the direction of AIRMATICSTM.
28 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2021 | FACTORY&HANDLINGSOLUTIONS
Kevin Manning, director at KSM Engineering says: “We’d known for some time that the 40-bar turbo unit was only efficient when fully utilised, and that it was causing a series of inefficiencies for a large proportion of the time. The fact that we were having to incorporate workarounds, none of which were required given how robust the Metacentre control solution was, further signalled that it was time to revaluate our compressor system and restructure the setup in order to get the very best from our assets.”
MOVING HOME
The two WH28 and WH40 units, which had been operational at the Norwich plant for 18 years, were transported to Britvic’s Kylemore site in Ireland, and installed alongside two existing WH29 reciprocating Gardner Denver compressors. As part of the installation, the Metacentre control platform, which was also used at the Kylemore site, was upgraded to AIRMATICSTM, CMC’s most recent IoT solution capable of managing an infinite number of locally interconnected fixed speed, variable speed or variable output air compressors, regardless of age and brand, by responding to feedback in real-time and automatically adjusting settings and performance levels accordingly.
The upgrade also enabled the system to measure power per compressor in addition to system dew point and dryer alarm on the air treatment equipment. The inclusion of the solution’s latest generation of visualisation technology also meant that performance, power discrepancies and any opportunities to make further gains could be quickly identified.
Since Britvic moved its WH28 and WH40 units from Norwich and installed them alongside the two WH29 compressors at its Ireland plant, it has removed the volatility associated with a partially run turbo compressor. Furthermore, the range of power afforded by utilising a combination of the WH29, WH28 and WH40 compressors, in conjunction with using AIRMATICSTM, means that whilst the system can draw on a total 1.3 megawatts of power if required, it has more choice when it comes to only drawing on what is required at any given time.
CMC
www.cmcnv.com
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