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

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Problem 2: A major U.S. food manufacturer had multiple cookie and cracker production lines. They found that short term voltage disturbances were a major concern regarding downtime and safety. The customer realized that short term voltage sags were more disruptive than long term power outages – because of the nature of how their production staff reacted to them.

During a complete power outage, the production line (consisting of a conveyor belt travelling at speeds of 50 – 200 ft per minute depending on product through a 300 ft. tunnel oven) would come to a stop.

Because of the intense heat of the ovens and the process, many of the products would catch fire after being over exposed to high temperatures for a short time. Because of this issue, during a long term power outage, the manufacturing unit would shut the doors on both ends of the oven and let the product burn out till it becomes ash. Once power was back on, the oven would be started safely and the belt would be cleaned of product residue before restarting.

During a short term disruption or voltage sag, however, the power is back almost immediately. Thus, instead of closing the oven doors, the operators would start the conveyor back up, and would position a person at the end of the oven with a stainless steel rake and bin to sweep flaming products from the line – before it reached the oil sprayer.

In several instances, this manufacturer has experienced flaming product getting past the employee and reaching the oil sprayer causing fires. In one instance, a very severe fire damaged a large portion of the plant. This plant had a voltage monitoring system in place that showed that the root cause of the fire was a voltage sag lasting less than seven cycles (approximately 1/10th of a second).

Solution 2: Because of the extreme heat in the bakery and the large amount of power required, traditional battery based UPS systems were not a realistic option. The manufacturer met SoftSwitching, as the company makes both – the voltage capture system and the DySC. The DySC can work in extreme conditions, and can be applied on three phase equipment at a fraction of the cost. Once applied to the bakery lines, the plants corrected on average 18 events per plant due to voltage sags. There has not been any fire of the same type since then and plant efficiency has increased.

* Francis Phang is the Regional Manager (Asia) and Steve Verrett is the Business Development Director at SoftSwitching

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F&B/Power Quality

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