Completely replacing old venti­lation systems is time-consuming and costly. The fan retrofit project at a high-rise building in Dubai shows that there is huge poten­tial for savings with EC fans arranged in the FanGrid and a demand-based control system.»

Today, centrifugal fans are used in a wide range of appli­ca­tions. Depending on where they are installed, reso­nances with increased vibra­tion veloc­i­ties may occur in unfore­seen speed ranges. If the fan is often oper­ated in such crit­ical ranges, the drive motors’ bearing system may be damaged, leading to prema­ture fan failure. Although these vibra­tions are measur­able for the system oper­ator, it is not easy to stop them. Auto­matic reso­nance detec­tion provides a remedy. It avoids oper­a­tion at crit­ical speeds, which increases the service life and oper­a­tional reli­a­bility of the fans»

Fans are complex flow machines, which some­times respond to aero­dy­namic changes in their surround­ings. The instal­la­tion situ­a­tion plays an impor­tant role here. This means that, when installed in the appli­ca­tion, the fan is often not as quiet as hoped for, or less effi­cient than promised in the data sheet. Last but not least, we recom­mend having the fan manu­fac­turer on board at an early stage of in-house unit devel­op­ment. This means there will certainly be no unpleasant surprises later.»

Quieter, more effi­cient, requiring less main­te­nance – those were the demands of pack­aging giant Poly­plex for its new venti­lation system. And it found the solu­tion in the form of an ebm-papst FanGrid with EC fans.»