Electrification of valve system

Abstract: This report is going to investigate the possibility to save energy by converting a valve opening mechanism in a waste disposal system from a pneumatic system to an electric system. To power the system, which mainly consists of an electric actuator and a valve control module, a solar panel system was designed. The valve system was controlled by the lightweight messaging protocol MQTT. To be able to choose an electric actuator the needed force was measured and data regarding maximal stroke was taken from the data sheet of the existing setup. For developing an optimal solar panel system a program was written in Google Spreadsheet. The program takes input regarding power, cycles, solar panel system specifications and environmental factors. The output from the program is energy consumption for the system, specification for solar charger, solar panel setup and charge data. The result was that the solar panel system needed to consists of four 12 V VRLA batteries with a capacity of 90 Ah each and four solar panels with a rated power of 300 W each. The solar charger must be able to handle 900 W and provide an output current of 25,5 A to fulfil the demands. The new electric actuator will consume four times less energy than the old pneumatic actuator. Most of the energy savings are consequences of reduced energy consumption at idle of the system. A demonstarator was built to test the system.