Teknion was founded in Toronto in 1983, and has grown into a leader in the contract furniture design and manufacturing space. The company has a strong commitment to sustainability, developing a charter each year that outlines steps to be taken that year towards reducing the organization's environmental footprint.
With this in mind, Tekwood, Teknion's wood division, began looking for a better solution for dust collection system controls. Says Olaf Boehm, Teknion Manufacturing Engineer: "During production, the system was constantly running at full power. It would not modulate based on actual dust generation and, in turn, was consuming enormous amounts of energy."
At this point Tekwood invited SyEnergy Integrated Energy Solutions to evaluate Tekwood's 6,225-square-meter facility in North York, Ontario. SyEnergy specializes in energy-efficiency projects for industrial facilities, and after analyzing the Tekwood facility recommended the Ecogate Intelligent Ventilation system.
The Ecogate system works by continually monitoring all workstations in the factory, and adjusting fan power to match the machines' needs in real-time. Because of the proven energy efficiency of the Ecogate system, Teknion received a $75,840 incentive towards the cost of the project from saveONenergy.
The system at Teknion is now controlled by a single greenBOX MASTER unit, which manages all 26 Ecogate automated blast gates as well as the Power Master Variable Frequency Drives for both dust collectors (350HP & 50HP).
We are witnessing drastic savings in electricity. - John Martinovic, Director of Operations, Tekwood
After commissioning, the average fan load for the dust collectors combined dropped from 280kW to 114kW. "We are witnessing drastic savings in electricity," says John Martinovic, Director of Operations at Tekwood. "We continue to project energy savings of around 60% on dust collection, which translates into $90,000 per year."