Honeywell has announced the launch of its new thyristor line of products designed to regulate accurate power to electrically heated industrial devices and provide protection from transient overvoltage conditions.
Honeywell’s thyristors are ideal for industrial applications involving electrically heated equipment in electric furnaces, automotive painting booths, textile machinery, drying ovens, petrochemicals, metals-ferrous and non-ferrous, glass, plastics and semi-conductor machines.
The new thyristor products use the latest microprocessor-based design to accurately control a wide spectrum of electrical loads, ranging from simple constant resistance to highly complex variable resistance and transformer coupled loads. They are modular, scalable and offer among the widest range of product configurations available.
The complete product line can switch loads from 30 amps to 2,700 amps and provide outstanding performance even in the most demanding applications. The solid state design removes the need for periodic preventive maintenance and reduces premature element ageing with optimized heater power requirements. For companies in the process industry, this results in reduced costs.
Its key features include compact design, modular – semiconductor fuse protection standard voltage range as 480V AC, 600 and 690 V AC range, configurable via local key pad display unit or PC software, digital communications, feedback retransmission power, current, voltage and resistance, partial or total load failure, short circuit on thyristors, unbalanced load detection with alarm outputs, and thermal overload protection alarm for quality of heat treated material, eliminating the shortcomings of the traditional electromechanical contactors used in electric furnace control applications.
“Downtime in the system due to unscheduled outages and ageing of electrical heating devices often result in costly project delays and repeated loss of production,” said Amitava Biswas, India Country Head, Honeywell Process Solutions. “Capable of functioning in varied application environments, Honeywell’s thyristors deliver precise power, enhance efficiency and ensure maximum equipment life. Its capacity to drive multiple loads makes it a niche product in the market suitable for mid-size as well as large facilities.”
Honeywell’s thyristor units are compatible with the UDC family of controllers such as the UDC1200, UDC2500, UDC3200 and the UDC3500. They can also be used with Honeywell’s modular control solutions such as the HC900 series of controllers using RS485 communications or the SSR input, the 4 to 20mA input or the 0 to 10Vdc input. They are vendor neutral and can also be installed to replace legacy thyristor units in the existing systems.