Drives & Controls September 2022

44 n SERVICE AND REPAIRS September 2022 www.drivesncontrols.com Shrinking the end-of-life footprints of motors and drives E ach year, millions of tonnes of electronic goods are discarded around the world, often after only a few years of use. Increasingly, such devices can be harvested for their components – from the metal casings down to the electronics – which are sold and re-used in new devices, helping to keep materials out of landfill. While there are schemes that offer similar services for industrial equipment, recycling of industrial equipment such as motors and VSDs is not yet standard practice in the UK. Many decommissioned devices end up in landfill, or are put to work in countries where efficiency standards are less well regulated. For older, less efficient equipment this merely shifts the problem elsewhere, while transporting a motor or drive halfway around the world adds further to its carbon footprint. Electric motors consist mostly of metal parts, many of which are recyclable. Steel or iron housings, non-ferrous metals, cables, windings and insulation can all, in theory, be separated and re-used, while most motors also contain copper and aluminium. A VSD’s electronics contain minerals and metals that can be extracted and recycled. Advances in automation, robotics and machine vision are helping to bring down the cost of recycling both motors and drives, but it can be a costly and labour-intensive process. Motors, in particular, contain materials and chemicals, such as oil, grease and paint residues, that are difficult to recycle, and can be harmful to the environment if not disposed of properly. Many manufacturers of motors and drives offer end-of-life services to ensure safe, responsible disposal of devices, although there is currently no legal requirement to recycle motors or drives in the UK. The circular economy concept is rapidly gaining traction in industry, whereby every product, by-product and component of everything we use and consume is re-used or recycled in some form. It is estimated that if all industrially manufactured products were recycled completely, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by 20%. New developments in motor and drive technologies are helping to introduce a more circular approach to device disposal. Taking a whole-life approach to the management of both maintenance and upgrades for motors and drives can prolong their lives, maintain efficiency levels, and ensure that they are retired from service at an appropriate time, and disposed of responsibly. For example, smart sensors can provide unprecedented visibility into the condition of powertrain devices while they are operating. These sensors fit directly onto the chassis of motors with no wiring required, and measure parameters such as temperature, vibration, noise, energy consumption and bearing performance. They provide new possibilities for predictive maintenance, with the ability to track the health of an entire installed base in one place. Potential faults can be flagged up long before they develop into failures. This data can informmore effective lifecycle management, ensuring that asset lifetime is maximised through timely maintenance. Services are available that also recommend modernisation and lifetime extension actions using detailed knowledge about each asset’s usage, processes, environment and other characteristics. Such initiatives can allow you to return equipment back to its original reliability, potentially improving the performance of motors, while providing greater flexibility with new upgrades and retrofit components for drives. Once a drive or motor has finally exhausted available options for lifetime extension and optimisation, new options are emerging for their responsible disposal. In Sweden, a pilot project between ABB, Stena Recycling and the pulp and wood products manufacturer SCA, has used smart sensors to identify which of SCA’s motors need replacing and when. The motors are then retired from service and handed over to Stena Recycling, which can recycle close to 100% of their material. The retired motors are typically replaced by more efficient machines, so SCA’s carbon footprint gets progressively smaller over time. The road to achieving net-zero is not easy. By working towards creating a truly circular economy, however, there is at least a tangible step industrial organisations can take. As the circular approach matures, we will find new ways to increase the efficiency of the processes involved in recycling end-of-life equipment. Eventually, it is hoped that this approach will guide us towards a zero-waste future where re-use and recycling become the cornerstones of industrial equipment manufacturing and use. n When considering the carbon footprints of electric motors and drives, the focus is often on energy efficiency during their operating lives. But what happens at the end of their lives? Steve Hughes, digital lead of ABB’s motion business, explores some of the issues. The Swedish company Stena Recycling can recover almost all of the materials used in electric motors and re-use them in new applications.