The industrial refrigeration industry, like all others, continually strives to provide greater productivity, increase energy efficiency and adopt sustainable practices, such as changing to natural refrigerants and reducing CO2 emissions. In addition, digitalization strongly shapes how we live and work in today’s world and operators of refrigeration systems want power at their fingertips, and real-time data, to help them make critical decisions to control their production processes.

The win-win: energy savings and environmental benefits

According to our customers, minimizing one of their largest expenses – energy costs – is a primary concern and GEA Omni has functions built in to assist with energy management for a complete, transparent overview of energy consumption. By optimizing the entire refrigeration process continuously, Omni can play a central role in minimizing energy usage and, in turn, reducing the facility’s CO2 emissions. GEA Omni’s energy management functions are designed to enable users to effectively reduce operating costs by finely controlling key aspects of their process to minimize the amount of energy required. With these functions, operators can easily make improvements using proactive scheduling that allows them to define set-point changes or limit power consumption at times of the day and days of the week.

Another key driver for customers is the phasing out of refrigerants with a high Global Warming Potential (GWP) in favor of environmentally friendly natural refrigerants, such as ammonia (NH3) and carbon dioxide (CO2). But it’s not a simple switch. Changing to natural refrigerants requires a thoughtful approach and a high level of expertise. With GEA Omni’s built-in level of know-how, operators can easily make the switch without worrying about their lack of experience with natural refrigerants.

Omni’s energy-saving functions deliver where it counts most – on the bottom line – and contribute to the achievement of operators’ sustainability-related goals.

Predictive maintenance with GEA VTrac

Predictive maintenance allows the detection of potential equipment failures before they become costly or unsafe. An effective way to do this is with vibration monitoring that senses the vibrations from machinery and indicates what’s normal and what’s not. Any slight variation in the vibration pattern could predict a problem and allow remedial action to be taken at a convenient time.

GEA VTrac is connected to the GEA Omni control panel to provide a continuous, accurate report of its status in graphical form. This shows whether the system is operating normally, gives a warning of any impending maintenance requirements, and will provide an alert should an immediate shutdown be required.    

Predictive maintenance with GEA VTrac is an essential feature of modern plants, keeping operators safe by preventing major equipment failure and reducing maintenance costs by allowing remedial action to be taken before a minor fault causes a major problem.

Retrofit GEA Omni to existing equipment

GEA Omni is easily fitted to almost any industrial screw or piston compressor produced by GEA or other manufacturers. By retrofitting with GEA Omni, users can bring older equipment up to date with the latest control technology. This not only improves efficiency and productivity within the plant but also helps users to achieve the strict environmental standards that are in force today without high-level capital investment.

GEA has made its Omni retrofit package easy to install by allowing the connection of different types of compressor sensors, motor sensors and solenoid coil voltages. This reduces the number of loose-shipped items to a minimum, making installation quick and simple, typically within two-to-three days.