The cell phone assembly plant of Sony-Ericsson located in Beijing Kongang Industry Park, a total area of 3200 square meter building, originally used sheet metal ductworks. Room temperature was hard to reach set point due to air conditioner overload caused by high density of occupants and machineries. Workers felt hot. Cooling capacity and fresh air volume was inadequate.
As the original design can not meet the requirement, the factory planned to add another air-conditioning system of 400KW capacity (approx 80000 airflow volume) on top of the original system, to boost capacity from 1000KW to 1400KW. There are extreme obstacles in the installation if original sheet metal ductwork is used.
Firstly, the ceiling height of the facility is less than 8 meter, with complex piping, Many pipes and suspensions have to be removed to install new sheet metal ductworks, which is time consuming and labor intensive. Let along some pipes like fire hydrant pipes, compressed air pipes and cable bridges can not be removed.
Secondly, At least ten days are necessary to install such quantity of sheet metal ducts. The loss of one million a day due to an air-conditioning system upgrade, that will last this long is unbearable for an enterprise with over billions of annual revenue.
Thirdly, increased airflow and lower air temperature coupled with lower ceiling height, cold air discharged from sheet metal duct system and diffusers tends to form condensation on diffusers due to large temperature difference from the room. Condensation water drop could damage the precision electronics equipments. Large draft is not acceptable in the assembly area, plus the blowing wind could cause discomfort to the workers.
Due to above mentioned many reasons, Sony-Ericsson has not been able to resolve this issue for many years.
Based on limited installation space, time for installation and many technical difficulties, DurkeeSox engineers came up with a low temperature fabric air dispersion design to accommodate the requirement of large cooling capacity and low air velocity. A total of 20 pieces DurkeeSox fabric ducts (two pieces of 813 mm in diameter and 200 meters in length, plus eighteen pieces of 365 mm in diameter and 220 meter in length) are installed using both double-row and single row galvanized cable suspension system across the whole facility. Nanosox-PS/ slot with fabric permeation model is used to cover large area in low air velocity, and avoid low temperature draft. Selected color of white blends well with the interior, and fits well with tidiness and cleanness character of an electronics plant.
The whole installation of such a large scale project only took one day, because of the simple and quick installation method of DurkeeSox system. After a few hours of system tuning and adjustment, system operates exceptionally well, and the room temperature reached 23 degree C measured by the technicians of Soy-Ericsson.