Central vacuum system drives energy savings
When plastic machining specialist Carville approached vacuum pump and compressor specialist Becker to help reduce its energy consumption and maintenance costs, a new vacuum system delivered the savings they were looking for, as MEPCA found out.
After being approached by Carville, Becker’s site specialists visited the company and conducted a full site survey to ascertain the possibility of effectively and efficiently reducing energy consumption while driving down Carville’s maintenance costs.
Previously Carville used compressed air via a simple venturi system to generate vacuum on its machines; however, as the product mix has changed over the years, the company has required a greater number of vacuum systems across many of its machines.
Generating a vacuum via a venturi system is inefficient and puts an increasing demand on compressors. Becker advised Carville that it was using significant amounts of energy in generating this compressed air and could benefit from a new central vacuum system.
Vince Ellis, Managing Director at Carville, explained: “As a contract manufacturer of precision machine CNC plastics, we specialise in high accuracy diffusion bonded manifolds. These are fluidic manifolds, a bit like a PCB, but for fluids. We supply these to the medical device industry, life sciences and diagnostics sectors. We use vacuum systems to securely hold down and position the plastic plates and vacuum fixtures ready for CNC machining.
“Some time back, we had an excess of compressed air in the facility. We basically used that compressed air via a simple venturi system to generate vacuums on the machines. But as the product mix has changed over the years, we have required more and more vacuum systems across most of the machines.
“Generating a vacuum via a venturi system is very inefficient, so it put an increasing demand on the compressors.”
Becker worked closely with Carville in designing an improved vacuum system. The new installation included 4x BCV 300 Claw Vacuum Pumps, all with integrated inverter drives. The claw technology is extremely low maintenance, which reduced annual maintenance costs significantly vs the existing compressor.
Lawrence Huxley, Technical Sales Manager at Becker, outlined his company’s design: “Following the full site survey, our proposed solution was a new central vacuum system with all 22 CNC machines connected to a single ring main. The vacuum system consists of four BCV 300 Claw Pumps, all with integrated inverter drives. The compression chamber inside the claw pumps is completely oil and contact free, meaning the vacuum pumps are extremely reliable and low maintenance.”
The system is controlled by a Becker Vacon plus controller, which matches the demand by increasing or decreasing the speed of the pumps. This ensures the minimum amount of energy is used at all times.
[CROSSHEAD] Minimising disruption
A two-phase install approach was agreed upon between both companies, as Vince continued: “We worked closely with Becker in designing how we would do the installation, and we agreed we would do it in two phases which helped minimise the disruption to the production facility and the actual installation itself went very smoothly.”
With energy prices remaining high, reducing energy consumption is a key driver for most businesses. The type of savings identified in Becker’s initial site visit and delivered by the new vacuum system can go a long way in the constant battle to reduce costs and manage energy usage while delivering the added benefits of reduced maintenance costs and system disruption thanks to improved reliability.
