12 July – Elma Systems is building a new drive and control system for the La Frafana water purification plant in Santiago, Chili. Five big mortars, built by Landustrie Sneek BV, are at the core of the plant’s upgraded sewage pump house. The screw pumps will daily transport 600.000 to 700.000 m3 sewage water from a sewage basin to a 9,1 meter higher overflow. From this point on the water will be purified.
Each screw pump is driven by a 560kW 6kV e-motor. The complete set-up will have an installed power of 3 MW!
Customer choses for Elma Systems
The end customer, Planta La Frafana (Santiago), has chosen for Elma Systems to be the drive & control partner in this project. La Frafana’s choice is based on the overall efficiency that Elma’s integrated system is offering.
Elma Systems is able to obtain this level of efficiency thanks to several well designed and engineered technologies. First of all, we are able to use our own ultra high efficiency e-motors. These e-motors are built in the Elma Motor factory in Wuxi, China and deliver an efficiency of 97%.
Secondly, the system uses only two medium voltage drives in order to speed up and down the screw pump motors. These drives can operate as stand-alone drives or as redundant drive. A yield of 96% is guaranteed.
Finally, Elma System has designed the drive & control system is such way that fully sped-up motors can be bypassed directly to the local power grid. Result: drives no longer create any efficiency loss once the motors have been bypassed!
What will Elma contribute to the water purification plant in Santiago?
As drive and control specialist Elma Systems will be supplying:
- five 6kV e-motors, plus a spare motor
- a complete set of drive and control panels, including high voltage frequency converters from Schneider Electric
- a bypass panel (also from Schneider Electric)
- application software that directly connects to the SCADA system of the customer
- the commissioning of the integrated system
Landustrie Sneek BV is the primary contractor for this project. Landustrie is also responsible for all the structural adjustments that need to be made within the plant in order to make the new mortar system work.