Hexion’s St. Romuald team and Six Sigma are always looking at how to make things better. Last year, working with the Energy & Waste COE, they recognized the opportunity to significantly improve electrical efficiency of the cooling tower using a pump flow control strategy that has been successful at other locations. Historically the site carefully managed pump operation by turning off one pump when production demand was low to save energy. Careful analysis revealed even more savings would be possible by automatically varying pump speeds to match the production needs more closely using variable speed drives on the pump motors.
The cooling tower review also revealed further opportunity to optimize the cooling tower temperature, further reducing electrical use on the tower.
The site purchased and installed the needed equipment, and the cooling tower software logic upgraded to automatically control the motors, providing just the right amount of cooling water for the plant at the temperature that is needed. The results have been better than expected.
