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CONSIDER IT SOLVEDTM

Network Power • Process Management • Climate Technologies • Storage Solutions • Industrial Automation • Motor Technologies • Appliance Solutions • Professional Tools

One of Europe’s leading tyre manufacturing plants

– Michelin in Dundee - has installed a new cooling

tower for process water – and cut its annual energy

consumption by a massive 1,500 MWh. Key to the

savings is the close speed control of fans and pumps,

using AC drives from Control Techniques, matching

supply with demand and reducing the cooling plant

power consumption, when idling, to about that of a

domestic kettle!

This remarkable project was driven from inception

by Project Manager Mike Barklie, who identified that

efficiency improvements in recent years had reduced

demand for cooling water meaning that the existing plant

was over-sized. “I measured actual cooling requirements

and realised that there were further potential savings to

be made by putting in variable-speed drives to match the

supply of cooling water to demand,” he says. “It was a

major investment, but we have achieved a tremendously

successful result that has a return on investment of less

than three years!”

Control Techniques drives are the drives of choice

throughout Michelin plants worldwide with several

hundred drives installed on production lines, stirrers,

extruders, pumps and fans throughout the Dundee factory

alone, which has an output capacity of some 24,000

car tyres a day for the worldwide market. Considerable

investment at the plant is boosting production output and

creating new jobs. This latest project reflects Michelin’s

commitment to the environment and its drive to save

energy wherever possible.

The new SPX Marley high-efficiency cooling tower has two

30 kW cooling fans for the dual 300m3 cells and there are six

large pumps – three 22 kW pumps for the hot water to the

tower and three 90 kW, 4.4 bar pumps to return the chilled

KEY BENEFITS

• MASSIVE ENERGY SAVINGS• CLOSE SPEED CONTROL• MATCHING SUPPLY WITH DEMAND

MICHELIN DUNDEE DRAMATICALLY CUTS ENERGY USAGE

CONSIDER IT SOLVEDTM

Network Power • Process Management • Climate Technologies • Storage Solutions • Industrial Automation • Motor Technologies • Appliance Solutions • Professional Tools

For further information please visitwww.controltechniques.com

water back to the factory. All fans and pumps are fitted

with Control Techniques Commander SK AC drives, each of

which receives a speed reference from the controlling PLC

system that monitors pressure, temperature (of cooled

water), levels in the cooling water sumps etc and which

also produces trend predictions.

The fans in the cooling tower are designated as main and

standby, the drive for the standby only starting when the

demand on the main fan drive exceeds 60%. On minimum

speed, which is one fan at 40% of full speed, the power

demand is just 2.5 kW – described by Mike Barklie as ‘the

same as an electric kettle’ – some 87.5 kW less than the old

cooling tower. The average consumption per hour has now

dropped from 242 kW to just 66 kW over all the pumps and

fans associated with the water cooling system – a saving of

186 kW per hour – or over 4 MWh per day!

The Commander SK range of general purpose drives –

0.25 to 132 kW – has been designed as a simple, compact,

cost-effective AC motor speed controller that delivers

performance with simplicity and ease of use. With all the

parameters needed for 90% of applications printed on the

front of the drive, Commander SK ensures installation and

commissioning are straight forward.

In addition to supplying cooling water for production

requirements, the new cooling plant at Michelin’s Dundee

plant also supplies chilled water to the air handling units to

cool the factory in the summer months. In the winter, the

same system uses steam to provide space heating.

Michelin’s UK head office and commercial headquarters is

in Stoke-on-Trent with tyre factories in Ballymena (bus and

truck tyres) and Dundee (car tyres) as well as a truck tyre

retreading factory in Stoke-on-Trent. Its Dundee factory

exports its car tyres all over the world and continues to

expand with growing demand.