Dartington drives for crystal-clear air
An
Omron Electronics product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
May 15, 2002
Flue gas lead emissions have been reduced to effectively zero at Dartington Crystal in preparation for new legislation that will come into force in late 2002.
Flue gas lead emissions have been reduced to effectively zero at Dartington Crystal, Devon's famous contemporary glassware producer, in preparation for new legislation that will come into force in late 2002.
At the heart of this project is a Luhr filtration plant, customised to Dartington's exact requirements with high performance variable speed drives from Omron Electronics.
Renowned around the world for its striking designs, Dartington was founded barely 40 years ago, to create much-needed local employment.
Being sited in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, it has always had a principle of creating minimum environmental impact.
"Our low rise buildings and service roads virtually disappear into the folds of the landscape", says long-serving Chief Engineer Peter Wheeler, "and from day one our emissions have been under strict control.
This is in complete contrast to the traditional image of glassmaking, based as it was on Victorian health and safety principles".
"In fact we are already exceeding current emissions regulations and even some pending standards; the new plant is really for backup and emergency duties".
Dartington has installed a pair of 110kW Omron's 3G3HV drives, one for each of the fans that operate in the kiln exhausts.
Their role is vital, as they draw air in to help cool down the exhaust gases.
If they failed, the extreme heat would quickly destroy the filtration elements and lead compounds could escape into the surrounding atmosphere.
Omron drives were chosen for the project because the new 3G3HV series has been designed specifically for fan and pump applications.
They are fully featured, but the user interface is designed so that the main fan and pump features are prominent and easy to set up; other features are protected against resetting by unauthorised personnel.
The designers have built in energy efficiency, as these drive are likely to run for long duty cycles.
Importantly they offer superb harmonics performance to keep mains corruption to a minimum, even in a plant with multiple fans and pumps.
Complementary optional external filters enhance their harmonic credentials still further.
Being in a remote rural area, Dartington has a fairly poor mains supply, so often finds itself switching to its own back up generators.
This switching causes some voltage spikes and other sudden but brief disruptions to the supply, which can be disruptive and damaging.
These are smoothed out by the generator's own filter bank, but harmonic filters were also specified on the drives to be extra sure.
The 3G3HV is designed for just this sort of situation, with auto-softstart and 'catch a turning load' features so that there is never any disruption to the fans' operation, which would give rise to even a momentary increase in noxious fumes.
Equally there is no instantaneous corruption fed back into the mains, ensuring the installation complies with existing and pending mainsborn harmonics legislation.
After consultation with Omron's drives and harmonics specialists Dartington selected 3G3HVs with the no-cost option of 12-pulse operation to ensure maximum smoothness of output.
Another standard feature, PID controlled configurable I/O, was attractive because it made integration of the drives into the existing control system as simple as possible.
The use of variable speed drives in this installation is also helping Dartington work effectively within the Climate Change Levy framework which rewards energy efficiency design and penalises wastage.
Control of the drives is by PLC, and again Dartington went for an Omron unit, the CQM1H in part because of its inherent suitability for use in PID control systems.
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