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Weg News
Energy savings for packaging leader
Global motor manufacturer, WEG has successfully completed an energy saving project for Orleplast, a leading packaging manufacturer based in Brazil. With the initial goal of achieving greater productivity, Orleplast took the opportunity to invest in more efficient equipment for its site, turning to the experts at WEG’s Energy Efficiency Business Centre for support.
WEG permanent magnet motor saves for Orleplast
Orleplast is one of the largest packaging and disposable plastic manufacturers and ias based in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Having established in 1992 specialising in manufacturing plastic hoses, Orleplast soon expanded and began to concentrate its production on a wider breadth of packaging supplies, such as bags, sacks and rolls. Today, the company produces about 600 tons of packaging products every single month.
When considering an upgrade to its equipment, Orleplast chose to prioritise efficiency to ensure better green credentials for its manufacturing site. Upon approaching WEG, Oreplast was specified a unique WEG technology, the modern line of W22 Magnet electric motors.
The W22 Magnet is a line of motors from WEG with permanent magnets in their construction. The inclusion of a magnet works to lower the temperature of the motor, enabling a reduction of its frame size in comparison to traditional induction motors. Another important feature is that the torque remains constant even at low speeds, so users won’t experience any decrease in productivity.
“One of the key benefits of the W22 magnet motors is that they operate at lower temperatures than traditional alternatives,” explained Marek Lukaszczyk, marketing manager for Europe and Middle East at WEG. “ As a result, maintenance costs tend to be lower because the bearings last longer in these lower operating temperatures.”
In addition to the use of W22 Magnet motors at 300 and 350 horsepower, the motor’s drive was replaced with the WEG CFW11 variable speed drive (VSD). Like all of WEG’s range of drives and inverters, the CFW11 can significantly improve the energy efficiency of a motor, thus improving the plant’s overall energy consumption.
According to an energy performance report, the savings from the new installation amounted to 286,416 kWh/year — that’s enough to supply 85 homes for one year. Orleplast also benefitted from a return on investment of just 2.7 years. Such savings resulted in 36.2 tons of CO2 that are no longer emitted into the atmosphere annually.
In addition to all these gains, the replaced motors were sent to WEG as part of the payment for the new motors and were properly recycled according to circular economy and reverse logistics criteria.
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