Getting a flavour for robust cabling
The food industry is notorious for providing one of the most aggressive environments for electrical installation and operations. With the requirement to continually clean, access and protect cabling while also maintaining high levels of functionality, electrical engineers are faced with having to balance the issues of site maintenance and safety with that of operational performance.
This balance was very apparent in a recent installation of a new spray dryer facility at the Firmenich factory in Thirsk. Suzanne Gill examines the challenges faced by the installation team and how a common sense approach and the right equipment helped overcome the obstacles presented by this challenging environment.
As part of a nine month building and refurbishment project at the food flavouring factory, electrical contractors from the DES Group were required to install a state of the art new spray dryer with correlating motors, valves and instrumentation boxes throughout the building.
The desired outcome was to have a dryer designed to help the company achieve the required particle formation and drying needed for the extraction of flavours necessary to supply the food industry. As part of the brief, the finished works needed to be able to withstand rigorous cleaning, have easy access while still protecting the cabling and not compromising business operations.
A central control panel was needed. Form this, numerous operational boxes could be connected via electrical field cables around the building. The complex layout of the existing building and the numerous touch points required for the dryer added to the complexity of the task as the various boxes were split over the building’s four floors and were housed in more than eight operational rooms.
As well as electrical field cables, the factory was to have additional power, control and data cabling installed to bring state of the art facilities to employees throughout the building. To minimize the cable routes through the building the most effective approach would be to group the cables together and carry them in a single channel. Due to their robust construction and hygienic qualities, The DES Group selected Cablofil trays to carry the cables across the building.
Contact Details and Archive...
Related Articles...