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01/04/2010
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Animal feed manufacturer ABN reckons it has been saving more than 30% off its electrical motors energy bill since installing 33 ABB low voltage ac drives on its pig and poultry feed production plant.
 ABN supply chain director Alex Masih says: "We wanted to look at cooler fans, grinders, grinder extractor fans and air compressors. IDS [ABB drives alliance partner] promised they could achieve significant energy savings."
The existing machines had either no control or simple dampers on fans. IDS conducted an energy survey at seven of ABN's UK mills, installing temporary IP54-protected drives to determine potential savings.
Power monitoring was carried out before and after, and the survey revealed a potential for 25% power reduction on recommended applications – a figure exceeded following installation.
Masih says work on variable speed control of cooler fans at the company's Northallerton site has also shown potential for a further 23% saving, promising payback within two years.
He also says that IDS helped ABN to achieve better product size control on the grinders. "The beaters in the grinding machines produce different sized stock, depending on speed, so using drives also allows us to vary the size of the feed to suit customers' needs.
"Using the ABB solution allowed us to retrofit the drives onto our existing grinders rather than buy new variable speed grinders."
The drives' own soft start program was also used to reduce any start-up stresses.
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Author
Brian Tinham
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