Electrical infrastructure systems in cement plants

Reliable and smart infrastructure influences the efficiency of industrial plants

Correct dimensioning, smart positioning and use of right technology help to save investment and operating cost.
A reliable plant infrastructure consists of:

  • Optimized substation and electric room layout
  • Cable engineering
  • Installation engineering
  • Earthing
  • Lightning protection
  • Process and street lighting
  • Fire detection, fire fighting and protection
  • Communication systems
  • Air conditioning and ventilation

     

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Substation and elecritcal room layout

The location of electric rooms and substations are of vital importance when it comes to investment and operation cost. Power loss is determined by the average cable length between electric room and consumer. The shorter the distance, the lower the loss. ABB’s experienced infrastructure engineers will help you save investment and energy cost by designing the energy distribution in the best way and by smart positioning of substations and electric rooms.

Earthing and lightning protection

Correctly designed and implemented earthing systems help maintaining high operational availability of electrical installations, improve technical performance and reduce risk of disturbances, damages and injuries.

Main purposes for earthing an electrical network:

• Preventing voltage to earth
• Protection of personnel and property
• Protection against transient overvoltages
• Protection against static discharges
• Protection against the effect of lightning strikes
• Protection against stray currents
• Creating defined network conditions for protection and metering purposes

Industrial lighting

Cable and installation engineering

Industrial plants require an extensive cable network. With an energy distribution from high- to medium and low voltage feeders down to the corresponding consumers including related process control, earthing and lighting, the overall length of power and control cables can easily reach a total of several hundred or over thousand kilometers. ABB’s optimized infrastructure engineering, supported by modern network calculation tools help end users save energy and cost.

To select the appropriate cable type and cross-section, several factors have to be considered:

• Ambient temperature
• Cable laying method
• Permissible voltage drop
• Nominal current
• Cable length 
• Short-circuit current 
• Tripping times of protective devices 
• Load flow calculations 
• Harmonic distortion 
• Network grounding

Generally industrial plant installations consume a considerable amount of energy. Lighting systems must be able to fulfill a broad range of requirements: In electric rooms, offices, workshops or laboratories illumination levels are higher than in production areas, storage zones or roadways. ABB’s engineers are here to help with careful selection of equipment, establish optimized illumination levels and lay the foundation for optimal energy savings. We have the process know-how and experience to provide the correct design and layout of energy and cost efficient lighting installations.

 

 

Communication systems

Fire protection

Fire protection systems put their main focus on cable- and electrical rooms, cable tunnels and transformers where the risk for arcing faults or temperature rise due to operational overload is highest. Fire protection is a very serious business and preventive measures are compulsory. These include:

• Separation of buildings into fire zones and other civil construction countermeasures
• Installation of fire-barriers, particularly where cables, conduits or pipes, etc. penetrate the walls
• Selection of appropriate fire retardant materials
• Installation of an integrated fire alarm system
• Installation of fire extinguishing systems
• Installation of firefighting equipment

ABB’s automatic fire alarm system using electronic sensors allows for early detection and actions to be taken quickly and efficiently. Electrical isolation and the shutdown of ventilation systems in the affected area are initiated automatically.

Reliable plant communication, both external and internal, is crucial in industrial plants. For remote analytics, maintenance and troubleshooting a reliable, smart and interconnected communication system is of very high importance.

With the latest communication technologies a lot of functionality has merged into smart telephone and communication systems, combining the advantages of the previously separated systems.

The following functionalities are in common use today:
• Desk or wall mounted phones and mobiles phones
• Intercom (plant communication network)
• Paging

While telephone and mobiles (analogue or digital, conventional or by satellite) serve mainly external communication, intercom and paging systems are mainly used for plant internal purposes. The actual arrangement, location and number of the apparatuses depends strongly on the plant requirements. The systems itself is modular, extendable and equipped with a programmable main unit and can be interconnected. By using modern field bus technology, the performance and comfort of communication systems have tremendously increased at reduced cabling and installation costs. Not only functionality is a design criteria, but also environmental conditions.

Ventilation and cooling

Ventilation and cooling systems ensure constant or even increased performance of electrical equipment, prevent damages and are therefore responsible for the safety of the complete plant and staff. Where most of the components are operated on natural air flow only, others such as power electronics require permanent forced cooling to protect critical components. 

ABB’s infrastructure ventilation and cooling systems include:
• Ventilation of switchgear- and control rooms
• Air conditioning of switchgear- and control rooms
• Forced cooling of switchgear and other components
• Ventilation and cooling systems for motors
• Ventilation and cooling systems for power electronics
• Water cooling units to protect semi-conductor elements of high current frequency converters

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