Austral Von Roll Isola, Douglasville, GA

Mechanical & HVAC Consulting Services

AIRCOND HVAC CONSULTING VALUE DELIVERED

When Austral Von Roll Isola (AVR) was searching for a solution that would improve the heat up to cool down time of their custom annealing system used in the manufacture of its insulated rectangular wire products, several commercial HVAC companies were unwilling to take up the challenge of devising a workable solution for this complex problem. Aircond, with its years of commercial HVAC services, technical expertise and large organization of HVAC technicians and engineers, was able to collaborate with the AVR mechanical engineering staff to recommend and implement changes that allowed the plant to meet their goal of improving the productivity of the plant while maintaining the high quality of the products delivered.

MECHANICAL & HVAC PROJECT SCOPE OF SERVICE

Austral Von Roll Isola manufactures high quality insulated rectangular wire for the industrial, power generation and power distribution industries. The series of steps required to process copper rods into finished custom coated rectangular wire is a complex one involving a drawing and rolling process to harden the copper followed by an annealing process and finally completed with a "value-added" insulation coating based on customer specification and application. To decrease the annealing cycle times required by AVR's custom annealing system, Aircond was chosen to provide mechanical and HVAC consulting services, and to recommend and implement improvements that would reduce the length of time required to cool down the copper coils, currently 12 to 13 hours per cycle, with the ultimate goal being increased capacity and reduced costs.

AUSTRAL VON ROLL ISOLA FACILITIES BACKGROUND

Originally founded in Breitenbach, Switzerland, in 1903, Von Roll Isola has been at the forefront of technology and a pioneer in the field of insulation for electrical machinery. During the past 100 years, Von Roll Isola has developed into a global enterprise with facilities in Europe, North and South America, South Africa as well as Asia, employing over 2000 people dedicated to providing their customers high quality products and solutions.

MECHANICAL & HVAC PROJECT OBJECTIVES

While AVR had already procured and installed a custom designed annealing system that facilitated annealing cycle times, it was believed that additional mechanical improvements and increased automation of the existing system could further reduce the cycle time required from heat up to cool down. This system utilized high heat for a specific cycle, then a cool down system using a refrigerant heat exchanger that would cool large copper coils to room temperature in a short period of time. Due to the heat exchanger being exposed to a wide range of temperatures, a sophisticated DX refrigerant piping system was required to prevent oil carbonization and compressor failure. Hot gas bypass was also required for compressor loading at low suction temperatures. At times, human intervention was required to manually override the system to facilitate proper cooling, a condition AVR desired to eliminate with increased system automation. AVR believed it was possible to achieve enhancements to this system, resulting in a reduction in the number of hours required to cool down the copper coils.

MECHANICAL & HVAC SOLUTIONS

Once the complexity of these processes was understood, a team of Aircond technical experts was able to recommend changes in the refrigerant piping scheme as well as temperature and pressure monitoring locations. As required by AVR, these improvements provided the automatic desuperheating and artificial compressor loading needed for the system to operate smoothly and unattended over the full cool-down range. The implementation of Aircond's recommendations reduced cycle times by 25%, from nearly 13 hours per cycle to 10 hours.

Further mechanical design improvements scheduled to be implemented throughout AVR's other systems will further reduce cycle times to approximately 7 hours, reflecting an overall 40% improvement in productivity.

MISSION CRITICAL

OPERATING COMPANY:
EMCOR Services Aircond

CLIENT:
Austral Von Roll Isola

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