ABB’s next big move in paper production

By OEM Update Editorial December 18, 2020 12:26 pm IST

ABB has completed a large-scale remote commissioning of winder drives, upgrading and commissioning PM5 installations at ITC’s Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division mill in south-central India. This project included upgrading the mill’s complete winder drive system to ABB’s latest ACS880 drives, AC motors, AC800M controller and process panel, as well as ensuring that all new assets were fully commissioned and ready for operation. Following studies of the existing machine, detailed task planning, and numerous checks on the safety aspects of every task, ABB’s domain expertise helped the team complete the commissioning in just three days.

ITC engineers conducted a series of installations, hardware and I/O (input/output) checks, and reporting of field challenges. Team feedback indicated the user-friendly ABB system assisted with this site work. For any paper producer, the winder is a critical machine, which directly affects production. Any delay or malfunction will completely stop paper production processes. Remote commissioning during a planned maintenance timeframe was essential to maximise uptime for ITC and avoid unnecessary production losses.

As a result of the drives upgrade, ITC will benefit from more accurate winder controls, including inertia compensation calculation, loss compensation, accurate load share and tension, while also experiencing higher operating speeds, with improved uptime and reliability. Initial feedback from ITC reported improved runnability and reliability, while devising a solution for remote commissioning helped to reduce unnecessary downtime.

“Our ABB team mobilised quickly and used its remote expertise to complete this large-scale commissioning project, overseeing all drive parameterization, controller and human-machine interface (HMI) programming, testing and commissioning,” said Sanath Kumar, Global Product Manager for Paper Machine Drives and Vice President and Head of Engineering for Process Industries, ABB India.