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When thinking about heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC-R applications), it’s likely that the cooling and heating of buildings, supermarket fridges full of food, or at-home heat pumps might spring to mind. But what you might not think about are the compressors, evaporators, and condensers that work to keep some of the roads we drive on safe.
All over the world, huge tunnels and bridges are being built to make vital road connections and reduce travel time. They are often billion-dollar projects and come with a vast array of engineering challenges. With hundreds or even thousands of people utilizing these thoroughfares every day, it’s critical to ensure that these mega-structures are not only as safe as possible for those who use them, but also have the longest possible lifespan to maximize capital investment, reduce maintenance costs, and prolong time between rebuilds. This means it is essential that the correct protective measures are included to ensure ongoing safety, structural integrity, and longevity.
Building safer road infrastructure to connect people
The autonomous region of Macau, a peninsula located on the south coast of mainland China, is no stranger to bridge and tunnel building.
The four main bridges of Macau have carried tens of millions of people across the water that surrounds the peninsula, connecting it with the island of Taipa, and across land to Guangdong Province, China. Then there is also the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau connection – a 55-kilometer bridge-tunnel system consisting of a series of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea tunnel, and four artificial islands – both the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link in the world.
Recently, Eliwell by Schneider Electric was enlisted to work on what is currently one of the largest bridge-building projects in the world. The Macau Bridge will provide another much-needed link from the peninsula to Taipa, covering a distance of over 3 kilometers and carrying thousands of vehicles daily upon completion in 2025, easing the burden on the existing bridges.
So how will HVAC-R contribute to the ongoing safety of the Macau bridge?
The answer: Corrosion prevention. Corrosion can significantly cause the destabilization of steel bridge structures, particularly those crossing seawater and in humid environments. Desiccant dehumidifiers are the perfect solution to help prevent this dangerous corrosion and maximize the bridge’s lifespan. By controlling the relative humidity of the air, dehumidifiers can greatly reduce the effects of corrosion in anchor chambers, cables, and steel box sections in roadways and towers, and therefore greatly minimize the risk of structural failure
Mitigating corrosion risk via humidity detection, monitoring, and data collection with Modicon M172
As part of our EcoStruxure automation architecture, our Modicon 172 performance logic controller will play an important role in ensuring the safety of this vital structure by working to combat this corrosive humidity. The project team required a controller developed for the global market with CE and UL certification, and the M172 fits the bill, accredited with both.
During construction, each pier of the bridge will be equipped with a Modicon M172 to detect both temperature and humidity and control the de-humidifier, whilst sending valuable data back to the monitoring room and remote control. The unit also has an integrated screen and analog inputs and outputs which are used to increase the energy efficiency of the system, achieving a 20% improvement, and cutting costs by 30% – driving huge ongoing benefits from this project in the form of increased sustainability and reduced environmental impact.
HVAC-R solutions from Schneider Electric
Today, HVAC-R systems represent a significant part of the world’s energy consumption, so it’s imperative to pursue sustainable strategies that help to reduce heating and cooling energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
One of our missions here at Schneider Electric is to help the HVAC industry and machine builders achieve these reductions via smarter solutions that integrate the latest technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), automated control systems, AI, and remote access.
The Modicon M172 is just one of the PLCs we offer in our specialized HVAC controller range, and with our EcoStruxure solutions for HVAC control systems, we can create customized, sustainable HVAC solutions that are not only flexible, scalable, and secure, but also help to increase safety, energy efficiency, and reduce costs.
It’s clear that HVAC-R solutions play a key part in so many of our lives every single day, and as we’ve just discovered, they’re often used in places we may not expect. So next time you drive across a bridge, turn the heating or cooling on, or even open a fridge spare a thought for these fantastic technologies and the benefits they can offer. Not only could they be keeping you safer or more comfortable, but they may also be utilizing some of the latest and best technologies on offer to help create a more sustainable future for us all!
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