A novel solar‐powered master‐slave electric motor‐based energy‐saving and cooling approach for the motors of conveyor system

Abstract

Product handling is carried out by the conveyor belts, which are moved by one or more electric motors. Hot products heat up the rollers of conveyor belt, which in turn affect the motor shaft temperature and a reduction in motor performance is observed. To overcome this overheating problem, a novel solarpowered master-slave arrangement of motors is proposed, which is operated by a robotic arm-based motor shifting mechanism controlled by an industry standard IEEE 1149.1 specification-based mixed signal embedded controller C8051F226DK. Another embedded controller of Nuvoton's N76E003AT20 is used for the temperature detection. The speed of master-slave motors is controlled by a PWM technique. The indigenously developed hardware prototype of the proposed system extracted 11.38% more solar energy than conventional supply and reported an encouraging 52.69% energy saving during the product handling on conveyor belt. As compared to the traditional methods, the experimental work achieved higher temperature reduction of the motor up to 34.26% and guaranteed the safe operation of motor. The master-slave technique, first of its kind, utilizes solar power for the motor operation during the cooling process. The proposed motor cooling approach is free from air, liquid, and PCM (phase-changing material)-based cooling. Thus, the work does not face any leakage problems and health hazards due to the wastage of water, oil and other costly and toxic cooling materials. Additionally, the motors are used with their original dimensions without any changes in motor casing. These different factors make the work competitive among other motor cooling options.