WEG’s direct drive increases uptime in juice maker’s cooling towers
WEG’s recommendation of a cooling tower direct drive system, featuring permanent magnet motors, has led to an increase in reliability and efficiency and significantly reduced maintenance costs and enhanced equipment availability.
The system has proven to be the game-changer for Citrosuco, the world’s largest orange juice company, with a production capacity that makes up more than 40 per cent of all the orange juice produced and exported by Brazil.
The manufacturer was experiencing low operational efficiency in the cooling towers of its São Paulo plant. For a solution, Citrosuco partnered with motors and drives manufacturer, WEG, who supplied the cooling tower direct drive system to support consistent uptime and product quality in the production line.
Cooling towers play a crucial role in Citrosuco’s orange juice production plant in the city of Matão, São Paulo. These towers maintain optimal temperatures during various stages of the process, such as juice extraction and pasteurisation. Effective cooling ensures product quality, preserves nutritional content and extends the shelf life of the final product. The continuous uptime of cooling towers is vital for maintaining production capacity. Unfortunately, Citrosuco’s cooling towers were exhibiting mechanical losses and low operational efficiency.
The towers relied on conventional ventilation systems consisting of a motor, transmission shaft and gearbox assembly. The cooling systems’ low reliability required constant interventions from maintenance engineers, particularly on the transmission and gearing systems, resulting in significant maintenance costs.
Citrosuco therefore sought to replace its existing, unreliable cooling tower systems with new technologies that would eliminate the continual need for maintenance. For this, it turned to WEG.
As a replacement for the existing motor, transmission shaft and gearbox system, WEG recommended the installation of permanent magnet (PM) motors from the WEG cooling tower direct drive system line.
WEG developed its cooling tower direct drive system specifically to support greater reliability and savings in cooling towers through higher efficiency, guaranteeing high levels of performance with high torque, even at low speeds.
Because the new system doesn’t require a reduction system, the motor eliminates contamination of the tower water that would otherwise be created by the gearbox oil. Other advantages of the new WEG system included savings of airflow control, elimination of maintenance stoppages due to the gearbox and noise reduction.
This WEG cooling tower direct drive system solution operates with the CFW11 frequency drive. This controls the motor’s speed and torque and prevents equipment damage caused by sudden power influxes or surges.
Within Citrosuco’s newly installed cooling tower direct drive system, the speed of the system’s PM motors can be modulated according to the application demand, thus providing energy savings and reducing water consumption.
WEG’s CFW11 drives are equipped with a current ramp adoption technology. This feature limits the current rise in stringent specified current limits — not only while starting the motor, but also during operational peak loads.
For Citrosuco, WEG’s cooling tower direct drive system has provided a significant reduction in maintenance costs, enhancing the overall reliability and efficiency of the system. Additionally, Citrosuco’s engineers are now able to carry out only preventive maintenance.
“Before using WEG products, the cooling towers used to offer low reliability, requiring constant interventions on the transmission system and gearing system, resulting in high maintenance costs. After installing WEG products, corrective interventions were eliminated, significantly increasing the availability of the equipment and considerably reducing the costs of corrective maintenance. We only carry out a lubrication routine every 10,000 hours of use, as recommended by WEG,” said Wanderley Garcia Cabrera, reliability engineer at Citrosuco’s Matão operational unit.
Going forward, WEG direct drive system operates the cooling tower and reduces operating costs at Citrosuco’s Brazilian juice production plant. Electric motors and drives supplied by WEG are bringing positive results in Citrosuco’s production plant, supporting its status as the world’s largest orange juice company.