Manufacturing Support Equipment Upgrade to Improve Production Quality & Reduce Down Time

Challenge

The quantity of dust at a consumer products client was impacting production quality and the downtime of the dust collector equipment was too high. The customer needed to replace their dust collectors for process and plant improvement.

Solution

A&E upgraded the control system for three dust collectors.

System Overview

The dust collector system controls a blower (on a variable frequency drive). The blower sucks air from the production environment through the dust collector, which itself is an enclosed process. Air flows through and dust particles are trapped and released through a rotary valve to a collection area.

The collected material can be used as recycled material in the process.

The controls integrated with:

• Safety gates
• VFD
• Rotary airlocks
• Pressure transmitters
• Level transmitters
• Air pulses (for reducing clogs)

The system can be operated in manual or in automatic mode.

The Rockwell PanelView allows operators and maintenance personnel to control the equipment locally when necessary, but the operators can also control from central control rooms running on Aveva Wonderware Intouch.

Results/Outcomes

• Modern controls – enabled reliable communication and mitigated downtime risk
• Integrated controls – enabled central operator station (for non-process required equipment)
• Updated documentation – provided the customer a baseline set of information for expansion
• Enhanced/improved compliance
• A standardized control panel design for the dust collectors was developed and re-used within the factory