How Power Quality Helps to Prevent Unwanted Shutdowns in the F&B Industry

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Problems With Power Quality in F&B Industries

Today food and beverage processing is more science and systems than art and artisans. Aseptic packaging has even been called the most significant food science innovation in the last 50 years. But engineering advances and sophisticated automation equipment are only as reliable as the power that supplies them. Modern manufacturing systems in the F&B industry are found to be sensitive and susceptible to voltage sag.

It may be a short duration event, but the impact on the manufacturing may cause hours or days of unscheduled downtime. One 250 msec event may cost as much as 10 hours of production. A voltage sag will cause unscheduled downtime that will have the following impacts to an F&B manufacturing plant:

• Loss of production

• Material scraps

• Missed shipment

• Damage to the production equipment

• Safety issues compromise

Unlike high value products manufacturing – as in the semiconductor industry, to be profitable F&B plants need continuous and very high volume of production. Any interruption to the production process halts it, and the production target fails. The scrap materials’ cost may not be high per unit, but the cost associated with missed production volume will be substantial. Voltage sag will also cause damage to the equipment, such as – VFDs, PLCs, sensors, which will require additional capital to replace or repair. Also, there are safety issues involved.

From extensive work with F&B companies, specialists have found that the following F&B systems often shut down by voltage sags:

• Dry extruders

• Aseptic packaging lines

• Tunnel ovens

• Pudding lines

• Bottling lines

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