The support for this subject seems to be growing, at least based on the increasing number of articles and whitepapers that are starting to surface in a very short timeframe. For those of you that might be following this line of thought to energy and capital cost savings, here are few that have surfaced in recent days …
Dick Caro has a follow-on article to the one he did in March, 2011 in the latest edition of Control: “Pursuing Sustainability with VFDs, We’ll never replace the control valve, or will we?” (Control, September, 2011, p. 75). Dick provides some key background information and also insight into some of his research and survey information on the subject. For those that missed or might want to refer back to Dick’s first article, it was “Eliminating the Control Valve,” (Control, March, 2011, p. 65)
As you might expect,
SustainablePlant.com is great place to go for a hot topic like energy savings. Last week, Veerasamy Venkatesan had an article included on
“Don’t Overwork Pumps and Fans: Part 1,” (sustainableplant.com, September 23, 2011 02:29:11 pm). The same article previously appeared on
ChemcialProcessing.com. Veerasamy gives some pointers on how to make some very quick observations throughout your own facility to see just how much energy is being wasted. He provides a few easy examples, not just for where VFDs might be applied instead of control valves, but also for some practical solutions using basic control design improvements. Given the name of his article, I am looking forward to Part 2.