Product category:
Manufacturing Machinery and Plant Equipment
News Release from: ABB Automation Tech (Industries) | Subject: St Regis Paper
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 27 May 2002
Paper mill benefits from upgrade
St Regis Paper has improved machine stability following an upgrade of the wet end drive of its paper machine, PM4, at the Kemsley Mill in Sittingbourne, Kent.
St Regis Paper has improved machine stability following an upgrade of the wet end drive of its paper machine, PM4, at the Kemsley Mill in Sittingbourne, Kent Kemsley Mill is one of the largest recycled paper mills in Europe manufacturing a range of corrugated case materials
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 21 Aug 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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The upgrade involved changing eight DC motors and analogue drives with more powerful AC motors and digital drives.
Despite a very tight schedule the PM4 plant was able to restart operations on schedule and continues to produce high quality fluting and liners.
Benefits already being appreciated following the work include a significant reduction of vibration on the press.
Munir Hasan, senior electrical engineer at Kemsley Mill notes that the speed of the belts on which the product is produced is much steadier following the upgrade.
He adds: "It is fair to say that there has been no downtime associated with the new motors and drives since they were fitted".
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The amount of noise generated by the machinery has also been markedly reduced.
Hasan says that there are a number of advantages in switching to digital drives and AC motors.
Both the power factor and the harmonics are much better giving a real saving in power consumption.
He adds: "In addition the AC motors need little or no maintenance, unlike a DC motor".
Downtime is an important issue for St Regis Paper and planning for the project was critical.
As much work as possible was undertaken beforehand with the change-over taking place during a four-day shutdown over Christmas from 24th to 28th December.
Although most of the equipment was being replaced St Regis wished to retain the existing Allen Bradley PLC and the CTC touch screen control system, as its operators were familiar with this equipment.
Off-machine equipment was installed and successfully commissioned prior to the machine shut down.
This included a 4MVA, delta-star, 12-pulse transformer and an ACS 600 MultiDrive Suite integrated via DeviceNet with the PLC and the CTC touch screen control system.
Hasan believes this is the first time that an Allen Bradley PLC has been integrated with ABB equipment.
All associated cabling was included.
St Regis Paper built a new control room as part of the upgrade to house some of the equipment.
The scope of supply included six 630kW HXR motors and two 200kW MBTA motors.
One of the MBTA motors is used to drive the thick stock pump while the other is used for the suction pick-up roll.
In addition ABB supplied two motors of each type as spares.
The HXR motors replaced less powerful 420kW motors; eventually the speed of the machinery may rise to 1000m/min although the plant is currently operating at 760m/min.
Both the footprint and the size of the new motors were different from the existing equipment.
The footprints were generally bigger and as the original gearboxes were being retained, plinths had to be made and aligned prior to the replacement of the existing DC motors.
All of the drives were installed and tested offline before the shutdown to ensure they were correctly configured.
The start-up schedule agreed between ABB and St Regis Paper was for the afternoon on 28th December just 4 days after shutdown.
The replacement was completed and PM4 was operational and producing paper by 4:00pm.
It has continued to run continuously since then.
ABB supplied a test rig with one motor of each type connected to allow St Regis Paper to examine the setup and other aspects of motor functionality.
The mill also uses the test rig for training purposes.
ABB has given a guarantee that downtime resulting from the equipment it supplied will not exceed 22 hours in the first four months.
All of the ABB equipment has also been guaranteed for 25 months.
To complete the work on schedule a number of ABB's engineers worked alongside the team from St Regis for many hours before Christmas, and continued to work throughout the shutdown to meet St Regis Paper's critical start-up requirements.
Munir Hasan at St Regis Paper is highly complimentary of ABB's work ethic.
He comments: "This is an excellent example of teamwork between ABB and St Regis within an exceptionally tight schedule helped by the efficient integration of ABB and St Regis's activities".
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