The Problem

British Salt base in Cheshire operates a production facility supplying companies with high quality salt across the UK for many varied applications.

With the introduction of the Climate Change Levy (CCL) the cost of electrical energy has increased and many companies have had to take a closer look at their processes to drive costs from their bottom line. A major concern for them was that their process for transporting Strong Brine from one area to another site uses 75kW pumps. This is a 24/7 process which traditionally has used on/off control with dampers to control flow.

Sentridge’s Solution

After a Sentridge carried out an energy audit at the plant, we concluded the pumps could be controlled effectively using ABB Variable Speed control to control the flow process without disruption to the all-important production targets on site.

With a temporary ABB’s ACS550 AC variable speed drive installed, the company has been able to change its control process and cut the running costs of the pumps by a massive 64%.

The Full Story

British Salt  is a Cheshire-based chemical company that produces pure white salt. The company is owned by Tata Chemicals Europe. Following on from the introduction of the Climate Change Levy (CCL), the  the cost of electrical energy has increased and many companies have had to take a closer look at their processes to drive costs from their bottom line.

A major concern for this manufacturer was that their 24/7 process for transporting product medium from one site to another uses 75kW pumps. They traditionally used on/off control with dampers to control flow.

Sentridge Control were approached to assess whether anything could be done to reduce energy consumption. As part of our process, we offer to carry a FREE energy audit. This audit demonstrates the benefits of introducing a Variable Speed Drive to a production process and will give real-time energy saving results. Customers get to see the benefits before making the commitment to buy.

Sentridge Control’s energy audit is a systematic examination of key pump and fan applications that include the monitoring of energy consumed both before and after the change to AC drives. So confident were Sentridge about the results the audit would achieve that the company installed an ABB drive on site to test its findings.

Working with the client’s engineers we installed and commissioned a temporary ABB Drive unit and recorded the results over a number of weeks.

The cost savings were immediately obvious. The energy usage was recorded during the trial and then returned to traditional valve control.

The investment is expected to yield a return in less than 4 months.