Articles
The profitable path to cutting carbon
Founded on sophisticated production intelligence software, a new breed of information-enabled energy management systems is taking on the carbon footprint challenge - while simultaneously improving production performance and the bottom line.
[ + ]Flowmeters help recover lost revenues and promote energy efficiency
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia, operates a steam plant for its huge downtown campus, generating steam for almost 60 buildings, including three hospitals, the governor’s mansion and a museum. Three identical boilers produce around 163,000 tonnes of steam a year.
[ + ]Spectroscopy comes out of the lab
Developments in technologies for building spectroscopes and spectrometers have advanced in leaps and bounds since the first commercial infrared spectroscope was developed in the 1940s and the first FT-IR spectrometer came on the market in 1969. Today, spectrometry is moving out of the lab and into the field and the process plant.
[ + ]Using microwaves to detect hopper blockage
The Schwenk Zement cement works in Allmendingen, Germany, required a method of quickly and reliably detecting blockages in raw materials hoppers.
[ + ]Foster’s upgrades coding equipment
Foster’s recently sought to upgrade some of its ageing fleet of ink jet coders. It sought an advanced ink jet coder, with performance characteristics not previously offered on the market. The system will be used for printing information such as the use-by date detail on shrinkwrapped cluster packs.
[ + ]Pick-by-light system implemented in a panel PC
In order to improve order picking for the large base of small warehouses and assemblies, SSI Schäfer developed an affordable pick-by-light (PbL) system that helps workers to fill customer orders quickly and efficiently, improving pick and cycle times and increasing pick accuracy.
[ + ]Chinese wind farm gains network redundancy
Chinese company Dongfang Steam Turbine Works (DSTW) was working on a wind farm project involving 66 1.5 MW wind turbines in Heilongjiang, China, and needed to establish a reliable SCADA system to help the staff remotely monitor on-site equipment and operations.
[ + ]Special pumps for crude oil caverns
KSB Group has supplied Scandinavian Tank Storage Sweden with pumps intended for discharging crude oil from an underground rock cavern.
[ + ]Electric motors for dry and wet areas
Motors used in food production areas are primarily selected for either ‘dry’ areas or ‘wet’ areas. These are entirely different situations with very different demands. We assume we are looking at safe areas, where there is no hazard from combustible gas or liquids.
[ + ]Securing Sydney’s water pumping needs
ABB’s high-efficiency motors and variable speed drives have provided an energy-efficient solution for transporting large volumes of desalinated water from Sydney’s newest water supply to over 1.5 million Australian residents living in New South Wales.
[ + ]Big tanks
The Tasman Tank Company, which produces more than 200 large industrial and municipal tanks a year, says advances in specifying, design, protective coatings, manufacture and installation need to be understood to get the best for particular industries and applications.
[ + ]Selecting fluid system components for use in sour oilfields
The conditions under which oil and gas are brought from their reservoirs to the surface can be outright hostile to many common materials used in fluid system components employed in industry. Potentially dangerous mechanisms include localised corrosion, stress corrosion cracking (SCC) and sulphide stress cracking (SSC).
[ + ]Geofabrics slashes pressure - and power bills
A recent energy audit at its manufacturing facility paved the way for Geofabrics to optimise its on-site compressed air system, and derive staggering ongoing energy savings.
[ + ]Improving the energy efficiency of industrial refrigeration plants
Minimising the power consumption of industrial and commercial processes is gaining increased focus with rising oil and coal prices, as well as impending emission trading systems in Australia and elsewhere. The power consumed by large industrial refrigeration plant often makes up the major portion of site power used on refrigeration-intensive sites, such as food processing plants.
[ + ]Process control gets a makeover with new-generation DCS
Historically, there has been a clear divide between control strategies for process and discrete applications. However, with the recent development of a new generation of DCS systems, the distinctions are now not so clear-cut.
[ + ]