Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: From an industry specific perspective, there is continuous pressure on manufacturing companies to reduce the operating expenditure by reducing the electricity cost by developing the energy efficient equipment and products especially conveyor systems. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Conveyor belts are the material handling equipment that is widely used in industry to move the material from the one place to another or from one process to next process. Conveyors are generally driven with electric motors. Conveyor systems are the one of the major consumers of electricity industries, which consumes up to 40% electricity of the total operating cost, while the remaining 60% is due to operational costs and maintenance. Findings: In this work, efficiency of a conveyor system is evaluated by integrating all the factors that have an influence on the electricity costs of the conveyor system. Using variable speed drive mechanism, an energy efficient conveyor system is developed by physically modeling the speed of the belt and conveyor loading dynamics mechanism under no load, marginally loaded and full loaded conditions. For the energy efficient conveyor system, different start-up of conveyor methods are evaluated as a baseline reason of generating the motor torque in comparison to rated voltage as an optimal energy management tool to develop a relationship across the power consumption, conveyor belt speed and belt loading dynamics. Application/Improvements: The design of energy efficient conveyor system model by controlling multiple drive units in industrial units.

Keywords: Conveyor Loading Dynamics, Conveyor System, Energy Efficiency, Variable Speed Drive