Three Ways to Improve the Financial (and Operational) Performance of Lighting Retrofit Projects

The benefits of lighting upgrades have been championed for many years. Almost every quarter, lighting discussions flood facilities trade organization websites. As lighting equipment manufacturers market their products we are reminded that their products not only save energy but support the sustainability of our environment. Nevertheless, a substantial portion of commercial properties operate with lighting systems that can easily achieve energy cost improvements of up to 30%. We may wonder why.

Making the case for cost conscious installations is key to helping facility managers move ahead with the decision to retrofit inefficient lighting with energy efficient lighting and operationally effective control systems.

The following tips come from our firm's recent work with a banking industry client. Depending on the scope of your potential project and urgency of your need to begin reaping operational savings, any or all of these three cost savers may be beneficial to you and your organization.

You CAN use what you currently have

Instead of hiring a company to come in and deliver a turn key lighting retrofit project, use your existing electrical maintenance team to implement the project. While many organizations continue to staff in-house electricians, the trend towards hiring an on-site electrical contractor is becoming increasingly popular. On- site electrical contractors or in-house electricians, are both suitable staffing approaches to deliver a lighting installation retrofit that is custom fitted to the operations of the building and the organization. The annual maintenance contract or annual salary plan has already accounted for the labor costs of the staff electrical team. By tasking the lighting retrofit work to your existing forces, you enhance the operational performance of the annual electrical maintenance spending.

If the complexity or extent of the improvements are beyond the scope or ability of your maintenance teams, the lighting improvements should be undertaken by an electrical contracting company. As you assess the developing project, realistically evaluate the capabilities of your in-house team along with the equipment, tools and experience needed to implement the upgrade. Contractors perform specialized upgrades as a routine activity and possess the expertise, tools and equipment needed to deliver a successful upgrade. It is worth the time weighing the costs against the benefits of the "do it yourself" option. You may determine that there is good value as you perform the work yourself.

You CAN be the project specifier

Understanding the various product choices for retrofit projects can be the limiting factor behind your decision to commence a facility-wide retrofit project or program. Realize you are not alone. Many utility companies have programs identifying pre-screened lighting professionals who can help you select the most suitable, cost effective, energy efficient lighting products for your facility. Local area lighting suppliers are aware that competition is high and it is in their interest to recommend products you will be pleased with and will deliver the energy efficiency and in-place performance you require. Finally, industry peers can identify suppliers that they have used in the past and whom they can recommend as solid industry professionals. The fear of selecting the wrong product for your situation can be managed, controlled and eliminated by using the existing resources that are available to you.

You CAN set the project pace

Every business has periods of reduced activity. For some industries they are the periods between holidays, semester breaks, plant re-tooling time or even just the times between the routine daily maintenance activities. Designating the lighting retrofit work as The Fill-in Project during slow maintenance periods, allows for you to pace the project so that it complements your operational pace. The need to suspend work for a few weeks becomes a non-issue when an operational necessity requires you stop the project for a few weeks.

Using your existing forces, expanding your knowledge to determine and select the project materials and pacing the execution of the work to fit your organization's needs are all ideas worth evaluating as you take the decision to retrofit the lighting systems in your facility. Adopting any or all three ideas can give you the assurance needed to know that you are proceeding forward practically and cost consciously.

Gwendolyn Morrison writes for Design Verification International, DVI. DVI is a Maintenance and Operational consultancy in Chicago. DVI offers energy engineering, energy management services and has design review capabilities for the energy engineering and mechanical engineering disciplines.

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CURRENT AND FUTURE OF PLASTIC MOULDING !!!

Current Plastic Moulding Techniques

Though the main concept of moulding remains the same, the equipments used by the plastic manufacturers have changed a lot. With the integration of latest computer technologies the production rate of plastic is greatly increased today. Unlike the olden days only when only fresh plastic materials were moulded to useful products, today with environmental awareness on the rise, plastic moulding concentrates on using recycled materials. Moreover, the advancements in moulding technology has made it possible to manufacture products in any complicated shapes.

The Applications Of Modern Plastic Moulding

The applications of plastic injection moulding are virtually unlimited. Starting from simple plastic carry bags to complicated lifesaving devices - every plastic product manufactured today are through plastic injection moulding. Some of the common applications of plastic moulding are the manufacturing of products such as packaging bags, automobile parts, beverage cans and bottles, computer accessories etc.

The Future Of Plastic Moulding

You will be well aware of the fact that the use of plastics is banned in certain areas of all countries. People think that this may end the plastic manufacturing as environmental pollution is a major concern today. However, with the introduction of the recyclable plastics, the plastic industry has got a rebirth. After all, as already said, we cannot imagine a world without plastics.

LITTLE HISTORY OF PLASTIC MOULDING !!!

We cannot imagine a world without plastics. Plastics have found their importance in almost all application ranging from household items to complicated research equipments. Though there were controversies that the plastics pose a threat to the environment, the advancements in plastic manufacturing technologies have given birth to the eco-friendly plastics. Plastic manufacturers can now recycle and create new plastic products out of the used plastics. You will be well aware of the fact that injection moulding is widely used to manufacture the plastic products. Today's moulding is very much advanced and very different from what was originally invented. Just keep on reading the article to know all about the moulding techniques.

A Little History

Plastic moulding is not a new concept developed in the 21st century. Moulding plastics into useful products exits since the origin of man made plastic in the year 1851. The process of heating plastics and melting the molten material to obtain the shape of the mould is the basic concept behind plastic moulding. Though the concept of moulding remains the same today, this technology has seen many advancements. Plastic moulding received huge importance during the period of Second World War due to the demand for the plastic medical equipments. In fact the plastic manufacturers where struggling to meet the demand for the plastic products during this period. This is period when the moulding industry got a new shift towards development.

MECHANICAL CHARACTER !!!

A mechanical is any of six characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream who perform the play-within-a-play Pyramus and Thisbe. Named for their occupations as skilled manual laborers, they are a group of amateur (mostly incompetent) actors from around Athens, looking to make names for themselves by having their production chosen among several acts as the courtly entertainment for the royal wedding party of Theseus and Hippolyta. The biggest ham among them, Bottom, becomes the unlikely object of interest for love-potion-charmed fairy queen Titania after he is cursed with the head and ears of an ass by the servant-spirit Puck.

These kinds of characters (see also the grave diggers from Hamlet) were traditionally portrayed by clowns, which most Elizabethan theatres had in their employ.

Fabric Type Dust Collectors for Air Cleaning

Canadian Air Systems Co. is a well known manufacturer of industrial dust collection systems. Dust collecting equipment is available in numerous designs utilizing a number of principles and featuring wide variation in effectiveness, initial cost, operating and maintenance expense, space, arrangements and material of construction.

One of the most widely used type of dust collector is Fabric Dust Collector.

Fabric arresters are high efficiency, medium cost collectors. The effectiveness of passing air or gas through a fabric at low velocity has been recognized and used for many years in air cleaning devices. Fabric is arranged in envelope or tubular (stocking) shapes. While removal appears to take place by a staining action of the media, in reality dust collection is obtained by building up a mat of the material on the dirty side of the media. This mat provides the actual filtering or straining bed. By means of this bed a high degree of removal is obtained even on sub-micron size particles.

The dust collectors are used extensively in industry for a wide range of applications. They require more space than most other types of air cleaning devices, necessiating outdoor installation in most cases

The usual fabric is a specially wooven cotton, altough wool, paper , glass cloth and synthetic fabrics may be used in certain applications. In recent years glass cloth has come into wide use because of silicone treatment of the glass fibers and employment of reverse flow techniques for cleaning. Silicone treatment provides a lubricant between fibers and increases fabric life.

As dust is collected on the fibric, resistance to air flow increases. Periodically the fabric must be reconditioned by shaking, vibrating, reverse jet or reverse-flow collapse which agitates suffitiently to remove the bulk of adhering material allowing it to drop into the dust hopper. In most collectors air flow must be stopped during reconditioning, otherwise released material will be re-entrained and redeposited on the fabric. Sufficient dust must adhere to the fabric to maintain the dust mat needed for maximum efficiency; therfore, after reconditioning the pressure drop will be considerably higher than loss through new fabric.

Rate of flow through the media varies with dust collector type, application and dust concentration. Ratings are usually selected so pressure drop will not exceed 5" WG. The smaller the particle, the more rapid the resistance rise for a given loading. For the same air flow rate and dust loading, resistance rise increases directly in proportion to time.

A New Concept of Square Air Fan

NISCO Fan Co. offers now a new design of a centrifugal general ventilating fan - Square Fan, in direct drive and belt drive configurations. Arrangement 4 direct drive square fans are ideally suited for a wide range of clean-air applications reuiring a tight footprint. Typical uses include pneumatic conveying, product drying, process cooling, and exhaust on clean-side of dust collection systems.

Some design features of the NISCO Square Fans include:

- Ten sizes from wheel size 10" to 30"
- Capacities up to 30,000 CFM airflow @ 20" WG pressure
- Choice of backward inclined, airfoil and backward curve wheel
- Four discharge configurations
- Narrow-width design permits higher speed and pressures

The following accessories are available:

* Clean-out door - available as a quick opening latch type door that swings open on hinges after cam levers have been turned, or flash bolted type with closely spaced studs to keep door securely sealed with Neoprene foam tape gasketing
* Shaft seals or Teflon shaft hole closures
* Outlet damper - single or multi blade, parallel blade or opposite blade designs, manually operated or complete with mounted electric or pneumatic actoator, for on / off or modulating air flow control
* Inlet screen
* Base rails with rubber-in-shear or spring type vibration isolators
* Inlet volume control with variable inlet vanes - external or nested in the inlet cone, for manual or automatic air flow control
* Housing drain - tank flange furnished in scroll of fans with down blast discharge, half couplings in housing drive side on all other discharges
* Spark resistant and explosion proof construction
* Safety drive guards
* Extended grease tube fitting
* High temperature fan construction with a shaft cooler assembly and high temperature paint
* Flanged inlet and outlet
* Stainless steel construction of SST 316, SST 304 or SST 347 stainless alloy are available for corrosive applications

NISCO Fan Co. Square Fans incorporate non-overloading BI impeller desings: the motor can be sized for the operating horsepower of the fan and not oversized, thus increasing motor efficiency. Heavy gauge spinning inlet with airflow diverter permits smooth air flow and close wheel tolerances.

Three different wheel designs on CB SQB Square Fans provide the widest choice in applications suitability, efficiency, sound, and cost. All of them feature the backward inlcinged non overloading horsepower chracteristic, where the horse power curve reaches a peak and then decreases even as air flow increases.

True aerodynamic airfoil blade shape allows stable operation from wide open to closed off; ideal for clean iar applications such as building ventilation with variable air volume system control or clean industrial gas handling. Flat, single thickness backwardly inlined plades are suited for applications from clean air to those where dust and limited material is present in the airstream and where airfoil shapes are not recommended due to material build up that closes unbalance and vibration.

Direct-Fired Industrial Makeup Air Units

NISCO Co. ia an engineering representative and developer of various types of gas-fired air makeup units for industrial building ventilation.

Gas-Fired Pressurization Units move large quantities of air at low temperature differentials (usually 50° or less), which is a strategy to minimize temperature stratification in the large spaces they are employed to heat. The equipment is typically mounted on the roof of the facility or at grade on elevated supports to ensure that the supply air is delivered high. The high air delivery allows for a longer “throw” of the air, thereby requiring less equipment to cover the required floor area. The most common fuel is natural gas, however, units can be converted to burn propane. There are two primary categories of gas-fired AHUs: indirect-fired and direct-fired.

Indirect-fired units burn the fuel and air mixture inside of a heat exchanger while the air traveling to the space passes over the outside of the heat exchanger. In this design, the products of combustion travel through a vent to the outside of the building.

Direct-fired units utilize air that will be sent to the heated space for combustion without use of a heat exchanger. The products of combustion are mixed directly with large volumes of outdoor air. Such mixing is considered safe because of the high dilution ratio.

In addition, thorough burning of the natural gas takes place so that no harmful products of combustion enter the airstream. One product of combustion is water vapor, which can be problematic with very tight building construction due to the potential for condensation in colder climates. For tight buildings, it is best to consider the use of indirect-fired equipment. There are several common configurations of direct-fired units.

The 80/20 design can vary the quantity of outside air from 100% down to 20%. The burner has a high turndown ratio and only outside air should be drawn across the burner. The discharge air volume is fixed and the quantity of outside air can be adjusted to maintain building pressurization. The makeup air unit configuration is ideal for supplying large quantities of replacement air for facility exhaust systems. Such systems can include paint spray booths and other industrial exhaust applications.

Facilities that have indoor vehicle operation frequently accumulate carbon monoxide and associated noxious fumes. For such instances, a ventilation sequence can be instituted to limit this potentially harmful buildup. The pressurization units for these buildings could be fitted with a carbon monoxide detector with an initial setpoint of, for example, 50 ppm that would trigger an alarm and energize a time-delay relay.

Direct-fired pressurization equipment is capable of delivering plenty of ventilation to a facility when it is configured as the 80/20 system described previously. Infrared systems, however, may need to be supplemented with a separate ventilation system. With certain classes of facilities, the infrared system would not require additional equipment for ventilation, since large structures with many doors would provide enough natural ventilation through leakage.

Gas-fired pressurization systems each offer good solutions to heating large structures such as warehouses, distribution centers, aircraft hangers, and manufacturing facilities. In very cold climates, it might be beneficial to go with a hybrid solution using radiant heat at the perimeter as the primary heating source and placing pressurization units at the center of the facility for ventilation and for pressurization when doors are open.