There are many sub-segments contained within the food and beverage industry, such as meat and poultry, beverage, dairy and bakery companies. Each sub-segment has its own range of processes that require specific applications. These applications need to perform reliably to ensure maximized uptime and the lowest cost of ownership. Danfoss AC drives provide optimized motor control and, for example, improve quality and product consistency, minimize waste and optimize palletizing. They are often regarded as the preferred brand within many of these industry sub-segments.
Food and beverage applications can be characterized by the scope of their requirements. Temperature regulation is quite common. For instance, compressor-driven chillers are reliant on the energy-saving features of drives to efficiently dissipate as much heat as possible. Hygiene requirements also mean that drives with robust enclosures are necessary due to daily high pressure washdowns. Danfoss has a number of AC drives of varying sizes with IP66/UL Type 4X protection that will fulfill this need.
The sugar industry, another area in the food and beverage sector, relies heavily on large centrifugal systems. In this instance, VACON® Active Front-End units are ideal as they lower kVA demands and return unused power to the grid.
Wherever wheels or shafts turn, Danfoss AC drives provide enhanced control by optimizing the voltage and frequency to the motor according to the actual demand for power, speed, torque, pressure and flow. A change of recipe requires simply a quick shift between pre-configured set-ups which keeps the process running smoothly and minimizes downtime.
The utility area is one of the main areas where it is possible to optimize the supply of water, heating, and cooling and at the same time save high levels of energy by using AC drives.
Danfoss drives optimize the control of compressors to reduce energy consumption and provide constant pressure regulation. Speed control is advantageous when an air compressor is running for long periods at part-load. And fewer starts and stops reduce mechanical wear.
Fans benefit from dedicated features such as the ‘skip resonance’ function. This improves comfort levels by avoiding frequencies that create noise and damage. For pumps, functionality, such as the Cascade Controller, distributes running hours evenly across all pumps. This keeps wear and tear on individual pumps to a minimum and ensures they continue to operate reliably. By optimizing the combustion efficiency of boilers, electricity and fuel consumption can be minimized. And the hydraulic performance of water-handling processes and the flow rate in feed water can be significantly improved by using AC drives.