Circularity in action

Keeping costs low, reducing total cost of ownership and improving sustainability doesn’t need to be a trade-off, if circularity is front and center of your asset management processes.

The circular economy is an economic concept that supplants our throwaway culture by prioritizing – amongst other factors – the lifetime extension, material reduction, and reuse and recycling of products. By contrast to the traditional linear model of ‘take-make-dispose’, in a circular economy we keep resources in use as long as possible, extracting the maximum value from them, and then recovering and regenerating products and materials at the end of their useful life.

By extending the life of equipment in service, you can avoid emissions, replace CAPEX investments with OPEX costs, and improve the sustainability of your facility.

Here are four customer stories that demonstrate some of the core principles of circularity. If you’d like to learn more about implementing processes like these into your business, download the ‘Tackling Throwaway Culture’ guide that highlights practical ideas for implementing a circularity approach to avoid operational emissions.

Be predictive, not reactive

Running a piece of equipment to the point of failure could cost up to 10 times more than investing in a program of regular maintenance.1 That’s why one of the first steps to implementing circularity into your business is transitioning towards preventative, data-driven maintenance and servicing.

Predictive maintenance is the prevention of equipment failures by monitoring their condition and performance. It allows businesses to schedule maintenance when and where it’s needed rather than suffer the implications of unplanned downtime due to failure.

Swedish utility company J?mtkraft produces over 2 terawatt-hour (TWh) of renewable electricity every year. To achieve this, they regularly update their equipment and avoid unplanned downtime with state-of-the-art predictive maintenance practices.

When it came to updating their switchgear, ABB recommended its MNS Digital solution to extend the lifespan of the equipment and make predictive maintenance easier.

Anders Gjerstad, automation engineer at J?mtkraft explained: “The upgrade provided an immediate noticeable improvement, not least because operation and service have become so much easier to handle. Production will not suffer from long emergency stops. It is not possible to eliminate operational disturbances completely, but it is clear that downtime has been minimized.”

Upgrading technologies without replacing systems

Right now, failure isn’t the only cause for component replacement. Many aged systems are being updated with state-of-the-art digital and connected technologies that offer advanced functionality.

Industry 4.0 and IoT connectivity are key drivers for system upgrade programs. Subsequently, businesses are investing heavily in automation and digitalization – cutting short the operational life of many systems that are no longer compatible with future business objectives.

For facilities working towards circular economics, choosing a system specialist that offers retrofits and upgrades of key components rather than the complete replacement of entire systems, can help strike the right balance.

ENGIE, a specialist in energy supply, was looking to modernize its electrical infrastructure by extracting as much value as possible from its existing equipment with high embedded carbon and material footprints – such as switchgear metal cabinets, plates, and busbars.

The ABB?OneFit Retrofill Solution?replaced conventional and aging breaker components with state-of-the-art VD4G vacuum circuit breakers. The upgrade protects mission critical ENGIE assets, such as generators and transformers, against potential short-circuits by isolating power interruptions within milliseconds and preventing severe damage and lengthy plant stoppages.

ENGIE’s technology manager, Nico Verroken, said: “For us, the retrofill from ABB not only provides a low carbon footprint solution, but minimized disruption to energy supply while guaranteeing reliable and safe energy for the long term.”

Intelligent servicing with augmented reality

Regular asset servicing is essential to operating well-maintained electrical power distribution assets and should therefore be considered essential to circularity.

Using the latest augmented reality (AR) technologies, servicing equipment is now more efficient and more accurate than ever before, but without the emissions associated with servicing technicians visiting site – saving up to 171g of CO2 per passenger-kilometer.10

Unlike virtual reality (VR), which replaces physical reality with a computer-generated environment, AR superimposes digital information on the physical world. Augmented servicing removes the need for an engineer to travel to site, by providing them with a remote real-time view of the equipment via a smart device like an Android or iOS phone.

When one of the world’s largest marine shipping operators needed remote maintenance to support problem-solving for its global fleet in order to reduce the impact of issues while at sea, it turned to ABB’s augmented servicing solutions.

Service support delivered through AR greatly extended the ability of onboard technicians to address failures they would have otherwise lacked the experience to diagnose and resolve.?

ABB’s experts were able to identify issues remotely, from thousands of miles away, and provide their maintenance crews with instructions to solve problems, thereby eliminating the need for re-routes, port stops and all the associated costs.

Upgrade reaps reliability and sustainability gains

In the steel processing industry, Finkl Steel? resolved long-standing production and maintenance issues at its Canadian facility in Sorel, Quebec, by switching to ABB’s VD4-AF1 vacuum arc furnace circuit breaker.

When two of their four circuit breakers reached the end of their shelf life, it made financial sense to upgrade their electrical cabinet with just one specialized VD4-AF1 arc furnace breaker, which has much greater longevity and endurance, slashes maintenance costs and brings added technological benefits. By halving the number of circuit breakers required, the facility is also significantly reducing its waste footprint.

The plant has not only reduced equipment cost by 35 percent thanks to the technology but also cut carbon consumption by extended the life of rather than full replacing existing equipment.

Phillipe Tremblay, Project Engineer at Finkl Steel?, said: “It’s been a very sound investment, as a year in no one has touched it. The ABB VD4-AF1 is capable of 150,000 operations and as we’ll probably have it for at least 10 years, that equates to a decade of no maintenance. Before that it was continuous inspections, repairs, rebuilds and all the associated breakages, part costs and hours of downtime.

“This new breaker also brings smart technological advancements, as by synchronizing the opening of the poles it ensures that overvoltage is eliminated when it closes. This is also mission critical for us, as overvoltage can damage transformers and other important electrical equipment on the line.”

Begin your sustainability success story

There are a range of established tools and techniques to support asset managers and maintenance engineers move in favour of circular economics, as well as several exciting new developments on the horizon.

Understand how to begin your success story with our guide: “Tackling Throwaway Culture - How to use Circularity to Reduce Total Cost of Ownership and Improve Sustainability”.