Quality power for high-quality nutrition: supporting efficient food operations in Brazil

Challenge

As the world’s population grows, the challenge of providing nutrition for all is in the spotlight. The United Nations has listed ‘Zero Hunger’ as one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), aiming to achieve food security and improved nutrition. Food processing industries worldwide, have an important responsibility, making them key players in sustainable development roadmaps.

For these industries to perform their role effectively, fulfiling SDG 7, ‘Affordable and Clean Energy,’ is also essential. A reliable power supply is necessary for any industry to function efficiently, and for this reason, enhancing power quality is a must to avoid unexpected problems.

Modern food processing units use a large number of motors, variable frequency drives and inverters. Power quality issues can cause these to malfunction, overheat or even fail completely. An unstable energy supply not only impacts food manufacturers’ balance sheet, but also slows down their operations. 

Solution

With heavy reliance on automated machines, food manufacturers understand the importance of an enhanced power quality.  That led Sooro Renner Nutrição, Brazil’s leading whey protein and dairy products specialist, to approach Hitachi Energy for a solution. 

After a thorough analysis, Hitachi Energy’s power quality experts proposed the installation of active harmonic filters for the facility. “Inverters generate harmonic pollution that can cause fault alarms and unexpected tripping in some equipment,” says Leandro Harchmann, Sooro’s Engineering Coordinator. “If not resolved immediately, this disrupts the food production cycle, which can potentially lead to food waste. The installation of Hitachi Energy’s active harmonic filters ensures a more stable power network which optimizes our facility and enables us to deliver a steady output of great quality food.”

A great advantage of an active harmonic filter, as opposed to the passive technology it replaces, is its flexibility, since it constantly adapts to any power quality issue present in the network without having to be reprogrammed. It also has a compact design which makes it ideal to use for indoor environments. More importantly, active filters bring an important safety feature: they do not overload, thus preventing the risk of leaks or fires.

Impact

Hitachi Energy’s active harmonic filters offer fast and accurate compensation of power quality issues, ensuring consistent and safe power. Their advanced features boost operational efficiency and reliability, and minimize energy wastes while reducing carbon footprint. 

With food being delicate, unstable power supply can cause large losses and damaging interruptions in production. Thus, active filters play a critical role in enhancing overall power quality to enable food manufacturers with stable energy and sustainable operations to prevent unnecessary food wastes.

Widely used in industries, commercial buildings and healthcare facilities, the Power Quality Filters (PQF) line features a modular design that is easy to install and expand to adapt to changes in the network. The PQF line is available for direct connection of up to 690 volts* and can offer different combinations of current that best suit the customer's needs.

^{*Note: With a step-up transformer, PQF active filters can also be applied to medium voltage networks.}