ABB drives enhance energy efficiency at Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin facility

ABB India’s channel partner, Microsys Automation, has supplied and commissioned the drives.

The manufacturing of vaccines is a complex process and needs a clean room environment to deliver the desired output. Clean room manufacturing environments are utilised as a part of specialised industrial production or scientific research and require high levels of flexibility, safety, and performance. Proper temperature, humidity, airflow, air pressure (positive or negative), and other conditions are mandatory to provide a safe vaccine without any risk of contamination. 

ABB’s ACS560 drives are playing a vital role in Bharat Biotech ‘s clean room infrastructure, where the company manufactures ‘Covaxin’, India’s first indigenous vaccine for Covid-19. Bharat Biotech supplied 20 million doses for the national vaccination rollout in April and is targeting to produce 700 million doses per year.

“Domestic production of medicine and vaccines has become imperative at this stage of the pandemic. Our endeavour is to support our customers and other stakeholders with our products and solutions and ease the process,” said A.R. Madhusudan, President, Drive Products, Motion India. “Part of ABB’s all-compatible drives portfolio, the ACS560 is easy to commission, use and enables higher productive use of energy. Our drives are also installed at other pharmaceutical companies in India, which are manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines for the country,” added Madhusudan.

One of the most critical aspects of clean room HVAC systems is air filtration. Not only do these systems control temperature, humidity, and air pressure, they also control the ventilation within the clean room, including the direction, speed, and filtration of air as it flows into and out of the space. The inbuilt application functions of ABB drives help in maintaining the right environmental condition at Bharat Biotech ‘s vaccine manufacturing facility. It also helps in saving energy by running the motors at partial loads. ABB India’s channel partner, Microsys Automation, has supplied and commissioned the drives.

Manufactured at ABB India’s Peenya facility, the scalable, user-friendly and reliable design of ACS560 ensures effortless commissioning and operation in challenging conditions. Offered as a part of ABB’s all-compatible drives portfolio, the ACS560 is fit & play ready to control customer’s pumps, fans, compressors, mixers and many other variable and constant torque applications. The drive uses protective coated circuit boards and individual air-cooling lanes, all 3-phase current measurement to help ensure highest performance, high reliability and a long lifetime. The integrated features such as EMC filters and PID control loops lead to a reduction in needed space and help in easy installation. The drive’s power loss ride-through capability allows it to operate during short supply power outages, which is an important feature for controlling critical processes.