Drives cut £10,000 pump repairs for Alkane Energy 13 December 2013

Independent gas-to-power generator Alkane Energy – which runs 81MW of installed generating capacity – is reporting reduced pumping costs and maintenance, as well as improved equipment reliability and longevity, since installing ABB variable speed drives at one of its CMM (coal mine methane) plants.

Alkane's Keith Mitchell explains that the company already uses the drives to control vacuum pumps on its new sites but wanted to see if they could be retrofitted to existing sites where pumps are run direct-on-line and operate at full capacity all the time.

"A failed pump can cost around £10,000 to repair. We can also lose generation revenue, as well as the cost to remove the failed pump, so it is important we know that retrofits of drives are possible on existing sites," explains Mitchell.

ABB Drives Alliance partner Inverter Drive Systems (IDS), which supplies drives to Alkane's new sites, did the retrofit feasibility analysis, running a trial at Alkane's Old Mill Lane site in Nottinghamshire.

It ran a 75kW ABB industrial drive, with IDS designing a door and back panel to fit the existing cabinet so that the drives' switches and connections could be accommodated.

"We have received many benefits from the application. The VSDs give us fine control of the gas pumping, compared to the coarse control of the soft starts," says Mitchell.

"As well as the money saved from cutting the number of pump repairs and lost production, the VSDs also save around 12kW an hour in energy that we can now sell to the grid. We also now know that the older sites can be successfully retrofitted with drives."

IDS has now completed two retrofits, with another three projects to run and a potential to complete more in the future.

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
ABB Ltd
Inverter Drive Systems Ltd

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