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Saving Panel Space in Serbia

ControlGlobal.com
09/06/2012

By Control Global Staff

The most expensive real estate isn't under the mansion of some Wall Street billionaire or Hollywood movie star. It's inside the control, automation and power cabinets in most process industries. Of course, all process control engineers are aware of this, and so Djordje Tripkovic, dipl. ing. el., knows it, too. 
Tripkovic is an engineer at Energotehnika Juzna Backa (Entjuba), an electric, gas and "heating line" utility in Novi Sad, Serbia. He reports that some of Entjuba's typically crowded panels and cabinets are used to control the valves and heating circuits for the boiler that's fueled by sunflower shells, generates 18.5 megawatts, and supplies about 400 cubic meters per hour of 130-150° hot water to businesses and homes in the nearby town of Sremska Mitrovica. Entjuba also builds a lot of its own equipment, including its panels.

As a result, Tripkovic says he was delighted when he found he could save some precious space by implementing four of Woehner's new Motus ContactronControl hybrid motor starters with its 60-mm, copper busbar mounting system in the cabinets and panels controlling the valves and circuits on the boiler. These cabinets control pumps and ventilators, electrical actuators for valves, ash and sunflower shell transporting devices and other motors. Consequently, the Motus starters control electrical, on/off actuators and flowpath-regulating valves for hot water. The Motus devices at Entjuba are for current of 2.4 Amps, such as the actuating valves that have relatively low consumption.

"The conventional solution for is a motor circuit breaker and two contactors," says Tripkovic. "We're using Motus starters because they use less space in the cabinet and require less work on the wiring, and so they're cheaper to implement and maintain. Infact, we can put the four Motus starters where we used to put one contactor/inverter combination. And, since Motus is mounted onto Woehner's copper busbars with an adapter, we don't need to do wiring from busbars to device. Less wire also lowers our costs."