One of Europe's leading suppliers of boilers, for use with wooden pellets as fuel, has upgraded its products, saving costs and cutting operating noise, with the introduction of variable speed AC drives from Control Techniques.
SIA GRANDEG, based in Latvia, manufactures a range of wood pellet fuel boilers with heat outputs between 15 and 500 kW, for both domestic and commercial installations. The biggest growth potential for this successful and rapidly expanding company is seen to be in the domestic sector in northern Europe, Russia and other (CIS) countries, where a sophisticated product is required.
As part of its drive to develop its product range for these export markets, GRANDEG brought in Control Techniques' representatives in the area, EMT of Riga, who proposed a new system of control of the screw feeders to improve performance and reduce energy and maintenance costs. Now, 0.25 and 0.5 kW Commander SK AC drives are being provided to give smooth and accurate control of the screw-feed motors to give a supply of wood pellets.
This system replaces a logic-controller, contactor and thermal relay. Now, as the boiler demands more fuel, the drive is accelerated up to the required speed and ramped down as demand falls. Control Techniques also provides drive programming on a LogicStick.
The result has been a product with much better performance and with greater reliability. "It is also much quieter in operation," says Mr. Andris Lubins, owner of company GRANDEG.
"The relay was proving to be too noisy for a domestic setting and now the whole system starts, and runs, almost silently," he says. "Because of the reduced stresses on the bearings and other components, the general reliability and lifetime costs are much reduced. What's more, because the drive has comprehensive diagnostics on its screen, most often problems can be resolved with a telephone call, eliminating the costs and resources required for a call-out."
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