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Recent Articles

What is stopping you from achieve your energy goals?

Examining the two main roadblocks to managing high-level energy goals.

When is the best time to upgrade your plant lighting?

If you're waiting for new technology to show up before taking on a lighting retrofit, you might be wasting a lot of money.

Sustainable practices lead to profitable byproducts

Learn how one plant reduced its total cost of power by burning waste to produce steam power.

Do you have to be a good story teller to be a successful energy manager?

Peter Garforth says energy managers need to be good at painting the picture of benefits.

More Articles »

White Papers: In Depth Research

If you knew how much it cost to run that equipment, could you make better operational and maintenance decisions?
Posted: 10/11/2011
Decisions have to be made — to save energy, to save dollars. Having hard data on which to base those decisions removes the "guess factor" and ultimately has a positive effect on the bottom line. Can recording data, analyzing results and then making intelligent decisions really have that large of a dollar effect, though? The answer is "Absolutely yes!"

Optimization of energy usage
Posted: 09/19/2011
For the industrial sector, energy consumption statistics are eye popping. The industrial sector alone consumes about half of the world's total delivered energy, making it the largest end-use sector. Moreover, although global industrial energy consumption is projected to increase by more than 40%, as measured from the beginning of the recent economic crisis in 2007 to 2035, emerging economies in non-OECD countries will account for approximately 95% of this increase in consumption.

Thus, optimization of energy usage is a natural and necessary expansion of ODVA's application coverage for industrial automation. ODVA envisions an energy solution for the industrial energy consumer that will be comprehensive, scalable, open, and inclusive for both users and their vendors. Within this context, ODVA's vision of optimization of energy usage will emerge as the natural sweet spot to help industrial consumers meet their overall business objectives and achieve greater societal goals for sustainability. ODVA's energy approach will offer broad situational awareness of energy consumption and enable control strategies to optimize energy usage throughout the industrial ecosystem from the plant floor to the grid. This approach will enable businesses to improve productivity and thus profits while concurrently benefiting people and our planet through better utilization of energy resources.

The case for hollow shaft torque motors
Posted: 10/04/2010
Permanent magnet synchronous torque motors offer significant advantages on high energy consuming and high dynamic applications.

Today's machine designer must evaluate more factors than ever in approaching a new project. Likewise, the integrator and retrofit engineer has expanded options, not only as a result of new technologies, but also because of critical areas of focus such as reduced energy consumption, faster assembly time, vendor reduction and smaller footprint achievement.

In the realm of motion control, one type of motor with a relatively short history has made significant advancements that necessitate a new look at its potential in many application areas. These applications range from machine tool rotary tables to various packaging, printing, converting, extruding, papermaking, plastic film and materials handling machinery, anywhere direction must be reversed with a very high degree of accuracy, no backlash (hysteresis) and the maintaining of motion control, contrasting the necessary decoupling of a conventional motor and gearbox.

Enter the often-overlooked permanent magnet, synchronous torque motor. Torque motors are direct drives built for rotary axes where high torque and high precision are required at relatively low speeds. With significantly lower installation time, maintenance requirements, component part count and space allowance, these motor types are frequently viable alternatives to geared motors.

Mercury control with regenerative activated coke technology
Author: H. James Peters
Posted: 08/05/2010
Many issues face coal-fired utilities with respect to environmental demands, some based on regulations and others based on local pressures. These include increasingly stringent control of criteria pollutants, anticipated federal and state requirements for mercury control, issues revolving around water use and water disposal, plume visibility, overall plant thermal efficiency, and the future considerations for climate change issues. For utilities that burn PRB and other low-sulfur coals, an exemplary reference project is the reconstruction of the Isogo Power Station by J-Power. This project replaced two vintage coal-fired units, and within the same site limits, more than doubled generation capacity to 2x600MW with ultrasupercritical boilers fitted with SCR, ESPs and advanced generation ReACT technology. The controls provide low emissions from the high-efficiency coal-fired boiler plant and allow the plant to operate as the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the world in terms of emissions intensity, at emissions levels that are equivalent to natural gas-fired power plants.

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