Özkan Çetin
Managing Director CTP Team Srl
Industry 4.0 means the fourth technological revolution in the industrial field. We all know what it is and what the impacts are on the manufacturing world. But what is it when we combine industry 4.0 and bag filters or Waste Heat Recovery systems?
In this context, the concept of industry 4.0 takes on many opportunities capable of giving answers to all the innovative visions of a company. Thanks to the solid partnership between CTP and CTN and the close collaboration with our customers who trust us, we believe that in the near future this type of applications will spread.
Monitoring, assistance and adaptation
Since some years now, most CTP solutions have been equipped with remote control and monitoring systems. These systems allow the operators onsite to check the operating parameters, verify any alerts and activate some corrective actions directly from the “control room”. Furthermore, these systems are IoT-ready, which means that if the customer requests it, the CTP engineering consulting support team will be able to connect remotely from the headquarters in Italy to provide support and suggest corrective actions.
Keyword “evolution”
Why the filter should be able to adapt? Because the industrial processes are affected by many different factors. The filter should be able to adapt itself immediately in order to guarantee the emissions level without affecting the process and keep under control the
operating costs.
The operating cost of a bag filter not only consists of maintenance costs, but also energy cost for compressed air fan; moreover, there are also hidden costs for the environment in general, given that the energy consumption can be directly connected to greenhouse gas emission (e.g. CO2).
The series of smart control panels developed by CTP allows to optimise the fabric filter operation, from the smaller one to the bigger, according to the above point of view.
Even if the main or only task of a filter’s control panel is the management of the bags cleaning, our smart panels are able to adopt the best control strategy according to a proprietary self-learning software, monitoring the filter operation through suitable sensors installed on the filter. This allows to optimise bags life and energy consumption according to the process, and its fluctuation, upstream the filter. IoT technologies make available a lot of real time information that in the past were accessible only through test equipment installed in labs or through test rigs.
The Smart control panels, equipped with the remote-transmission of the most significative parameters can be easily installed on bag filters; the set of data exchanged are used for a continuous update of the control software, improving our know how and, last but not least, improving customer care assistance as well.
Advantages:
• Lower maintenance costs than a conventional filter
• Optimization of energy consumption
• Bags with prolonged life-cycle
• Keeping emissions levels under control
CTP considers that it is not possible to fully benefit from the most innovative features of the most state-of-the-art filter if there is no device capable of bridging the gap between a “standard” filter which has the capability of keeping emission under control at an acceptable level and a “smart” filter which is adaptive to operating environment such as inlet flow gas fluctuations or lower operating costs.