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06/02/2012
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A project to upgrade the air handling units at Manchester Airport is saving 4,000 MWh, as well as cutting CO2 emissions by over 2,000 tonnes a year.
 The project involved replacing supply and extract drives and motors (from 3 to 90kW) in 95 AHUs throughout terminals 1, 2 and 3, with ABB low voltage drives and high-efficiency motors.
"The airport has a commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2015," explains Andy Sheridan, service facilities manager for Manchester Airport. "Together with our need to reduce costs and our environmental commitments, looking to improve the air handling in the terminals, was an obvious choice."
Paul Percy and his team at Massey Coldbeck recommended ABB drives and motors, and installed all the drives for the airport energy saving project, as well as several other projects.
Working with Craig Fuller and other members of the ABB Energy Appraisal Team, as well as ABB Drive Alliance member Quantum Controls, Sheridan ran trials on AHUs 48 and 49, which serve the Terminal 1 check-in hall.
"Terminal 1 is some 50 years old," explains Sheridan, "and normal practice at the time was to oversize motors. By installing ABB IE2 high efficiency motors and resizing them, energy savings of 5% can be realised."
More than that, though, the trial also installed ABB standard drives for HVAC on the two AHUs – and, by reducing the set point frequency from 50Hz to 40Hz, savings of 50% were realised, with no noticeable change in airflow.
In operation, the drives maintain comfort by measuring air flow in the supply air duct, using a pressure sensor connected to the supply fan drive's analogue input.
And it's not just about the drives and motors, according to Sheridan, who points to energy-saving dust filters on the AHUs. "The filters we installed are classed as energy efficient, as they maintain the filtering that we get from standard filters but reduce the pressure drop within the units," he recalls.
"This ensures we run the supply and extract fans at lower speeds but maintain the same air flow and filtration. We carried out field trials to ensure that the claims of the manufacturer were correct and we did see significant energy savings," he adds.
"The ability of the ABB drives to use BACnet to communicate with our BMS was one of the key reasons for choosing them," he continues, referring to the importance of linking into the filter management system.
"Once completed, the system will alert the various facilities managers of any filters that require replacement, and will also email our system maintainers directly so that they can carry out the necessary replacement works."
Incidentally, talking of maintenance, Sheridan also points to another drive function, used to detect faults in the pressure sensor or its wiring. If the pressure signal drops below 10% of its maximum value, he explains, a signal loss fault is triggered in the drive, when then runsat an average speed based on the last 10 seconds.
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Author
Brian Tinham
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