Industrial Automation Magazine India

ABB Digital Powertrain dramatically helps in reducing CO2 emissions

Published on : Saturday 06-05-2023

Amit Gupta, President, Motion Services Division, ABB India Ltd.

What is the underlying concept behind the ABB Digital Powertrain – how does condition monitoring optimise performance and efficiency?
The ABB Ability™ Digital Powertrain is a suite of digital solutions that enables businesses to remotely monitor the health and performance of powertrains, including drives, motors, and applications, such as pumps. It combines connectivity and data analytics with our expertise to make businesses' operations efficient, predictable, and safe. Integrating components, data gets analysed at the cloud, so that informed decisions can be carried out regarding maintenance for businesses. It is a solution that can help businesses transition from a present-day philosophy to a predictive philosophy.

By enabling full transparency on all parameters for drives, motors and pumps, ABB Ability Condition Monitoring for powertrains optimises the performance and efficiency of rotating equipment. It can also be applied to applications such as compressors, conveyors, mixers and extruder main shafts. By giving businesses fact-based insight into their drives, via KPIs and signal data, control monitoring helps businesses to identify irregularities before they become problems. Ultimately, ABB not only enables better decision-making but makes businesses one step ahead of potential issues that can arise.

Which are the various sectors you cater to for Digital Powertrains? How do industries benefit from the use of such equipment?
ABB's Digital Powertrain caters to various industries such as metals, cement, food & beverage, petrochemical, pulp & paper, waste & wastewater industry, including others. Industries benefit to a large extent with these sustainable technologies. The data insights gained from the powertrain enables customers to be better connected with their assets and make even better decisions to ensure safe, reliable and efficient operations.

Safety for discrete industries: safety is critical to discrete industries such as the food and beverage and logistics sectors. A malfunction or mechanical problems in an application may create a serious safety hazard for the machine and for those working in the plant. The digital powertrain monitoring means that production managers and operators can identify malfunctions via the monitoring portal, remotely, to support safe operations.

Reliability for process industries: process industries, such as mining, oil and gas, metals and pulp and paper need to ensure that their operations are reliable at all times. A process failure in any of these industries can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in unplanned downtime.

For instance, ABB's condition monitoring services helped Mokrá (a German) cement plant save $210K, while increasing operational efficiency. When the business faced issues due to non-harmonised rectifier modules and intake air instability, ABB deployed their condition monitoring systems in place for the drives to identify what was causing failures in the first place. Similarly, ABB's condition monitoring services helped a Chinese refiner prevent $150k damage in waste during lockdown. When the world was under a complete shutdown, ABB's service experts were quick in action and prevented costly downtime for the customer, by providing remote support and facilitating urgent spare part delivery. There are many such success stories that have and continue to engrave a mark on the fast-paced changing technical world.

What is the impact of using ABB Digital Powertrain in helping with energy conservation and sustainability?
With fewer stops, and possibility to ascertain potential issues way before an extensive problem occurs, ABB Ability Digital Powertrain Energy Appraisal unlocks insights from operational data to achieve energy efficiency gains from motor-driven systems. Digital data harvested from fleets of motors enables industries to identify and prioritise energy savings to minimise CO2 emissions and energy costs, thus achieving sustainability goals.

Today technology offers solutions, yet the industry is often reluctant to adopt these. What are the barriers and how can these be overcome?
ABB's cost-effective technologies enable businesses to invest towards a better and sustainable future. ABB's Digital Powertrain dramatically helps in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, achieving high energy efficiency standards, while observing lower-spending costs. Partnerships with customers are becoming increasingly necessary for businesses to meet their future goals. Industries have established challenging sustainability and carbon neutrality goals in response to the global climate crisis. Supporting customers and suppliers in their efforts to cut emissions and achieve carbon neutrality in ABB's own operations by 2030 is a crucial component of our sustainability strategy.