Tuesday 9 November 2010

Asphalt firm on road to £25,000 energy savings

A Lancashire asphalt maker is saving more than £2,000 a month on its electricity bill since fitting energy-saving drives.

Express Asphalt produces 40,000 tonnes of asphalt a year. An exhaust fan used in the production process was wasting energy through a lack of efficiency.

Express Asphalt works manager Rick Harbour explained: "The motor was running at 50 Hz constantly, it was doing too much work. This was the largest energy user in the process and we wanted to find a way of making it work as efficiently as possible."

The company turned to technology provider ABB for a variable speed drives. ABB operates in around 100 countries and employs about 117,000 staff.

And installing the drives has saved more than just electricity. Mr Harbour added: "We found that previously we were getting a lot of breakdowns because the dryer fan was working so hard all the time. This was losing us up to 20 production days a year, but since the installation of the drive, we have had no more than six lost days."