- ABB’s drives have increased the energy efficiency of Beijing Enterprises Environment Group Limited’s (BEEGL’s) solid waste treatment plant in Zhangjiagang
- Plant is benefiting from lower electricity use while increasing the city’s waste disposal capacity to 2,250 tons per day
- The 23 new high-efficiency variable speed drives (VSDs) will reduce the plant’s annual coal usage by 120,000 tons, eliminating over 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions
Credit: ABB
ABB is providing high efficiency VSDs for the Beijing Enterprises Environment Group Limited (BEEGL) solid waste treatment plant in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province, China. The project is projected to reduce the facility’s annual coal usage by over 120,000 tons and CO2 emissions by more than 300,000 tons.
Much of the machinery at the 370 gigawatt-hour (GWh) facility – including induced draft fans, blowers, and circulating water pumps – is powered by electric motors. Pairing these motors with variable speed drives (VSDs) greatly improves their energy efficiency. Since the plant generates electricity through waste incineration, this also significantly reduces its CO2 emissions.
The facility is using 10 sets of ACS580MV medium voltage VSDs and 13 sets of ACS580 low voltage VSDs to regulate the speed of motors throughout the plant, cutting energy consumption by approximately 30 percent. In addition to significant energy savings and reduction in carbon emissions, BEEGL also expects greater reliability, safer operation, and increased uptime of its power generation equipment.
The plant started operation in late November 2022, with the improvements expected to increase the city’s waste disposal capacity from 900 tons to 2,250 tons per day. This contributes to Zhangjiagang’s sustainability, as the plant’s emissions will be 40 percent lower than if the waste was sent to a landfill. The project is operating on a BOT (Building-Operation-Transfer) basis for a licensed period of 30 years until 2038 for Phase I and 30 years until 2044 for Phase II.
“Building the plant is an important step for our company to contribute to the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals of China,” said Liu Yanfeng, Electrical Engineer from the Technical Department of BEEGL. “ABB drives meet the needs of controlling processing equipment in different conditions during the power generation process, thus giving equipment longer lifetimes. Meanwhile, the high stability and security of ABB drives enable us to make equipment operation smarter.”
“This project with BEEGL is a great example of turning waste into energy, said Li Shiping, Sales Manager, System Drives at ABB Motion China. “Drives are vital for improving energy efficiency during solid waste treatment and the high reliability of our drives makes them a great choice for energy generation. Drives not only can reduce downtime, but also provide energy saving opportunities, making the power generation process even greener.”
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