When passengers check in at Frankfurt, their luggage is the first thing to start its journey. Quick as you like, suitcases and rucksacks are transferred to special container systems, travelling at speeds of up to 18 km/h on conveyor belts from one part of the airport to another, depending on the final destination. The infrastructure creates the conditions that enable a transfer time of 45 minutes for passengers and their luggage. Frankfurt Airport is considered a leading example worldwide in this regard. The conveyor lines in Terminals 1 and 2 – which are soon to be joined by the new Terminal 3 – ensure baggage items are transferred smoothly. “The baggage handling systems boast 99.65 percent availability, thanks to state-of-the-art IT,” explains Hubert Grünewald, who is responsible for baggage handling in the ground traffic services team of airport operator Fraport.

When problems hit

“Faults happen all the time – mostly due to the luggage itself,” says Grünewald. The reason for this is that many passengers travel with rucksacks that often have tabs and straps on the outside. Due to the centrifugal force on the conveyor belts, these straps can get caught on the equipment and cause jams. “It takes us about eleven or twelve minutes to deal with this kind of typical disruption,” Grünewald says. However, faults can also occur in the roughly 24,000 electric drives on the belts. “If there’s a fault there, it can easily take an hour to switch out the drive,” he explains. In such cases, the systems are immediately put into reverse, and the conveyor belts are reconfigured like the points on a railway to avoid the problem area. And the show goes on!

Knowing what's happening

It’s clear, therefore, that a lot can happen on the 81 kilometres of the baggage handling system. All the same, nothing goes unseen. The new Baggage Control Center takes care of that. “We see everything here – the status of the entire Frankfurt Airport baggage handling system,” says Grünewald. “We can pinpoint every disruption with precision and act immediately. Plus, we always know which suitcase is where.” The first thing you see on entering the new control room are banks of screens that give staff maximum transparency across all processes – at a glance. The beating heart of the Baggage Control Center is next door – the brand new data centre. This is where all the status data from the baggage handling system comes together almost in real time.

• “JUST ASK RITTAL!”

  Interview with Ralf Jinschek, Senior Project Manager at IUK-PM, Frankfurt Airport

  Mr Jinschek, what were your criteria when you were choosing the enclosure technology for the control room?

  Our starting point was the communication technology at Frankfurt Airport. When there’s a need for high levels of availability, we rely on proven standards. A standard for distribution enclosures has already been in place for several years, and that was developed with Rittal. We took precisely these enclosures and adapted them for the control room. Since then, our experience with Rittal has been nothing other than excellent in the control room, too.

  What experience is that, exactly?

  We know the quality advantages that Rittal enclosures give us – starting with the door handles. In terms of cooling – where technology has to exhibit excellent operational reliability – we didn’t want to risk any major experiments when rolling out LCP technology, so we’re very happy to have a reliable partner at our side. It’s the same thing when we need a quick solution. The best example is the expansion frame for the racks. We made a couple of calls, and we quickly had a simple, cost-effective solution that was technically sound.

  What about those expansion frames?

  It was a while ago that we laid the plans to use racks in the data centre that are 1,000 mm deep. IT has moved on in the meantime, and suddenly we needed deeper racks to accommodate the cabling for the new generation of servers. However, we only identified the problem after the heavy-duty frame, underfloor pipework and racks had been installed. Swapping in 1,200-mm-deep racks would have required a complete renovation, and would have caused delays and enormous additional costs. Looking for alternative servers, on the other hand, would also have been very complicated and time consuming. We therefore needed a quick solution!

  And what exactly was that solution?

  We said to ourselves: “Let’s just ask Rittal!” The solution was actually straightforward – but you have to think of it first! We simply fitted expansion frames to the racks, creating more space in the interior. Rittal took care of that in no time at all. Trust, close understanding and problem-solving expertise – these are the reasons why we value collaboration with Rittal in the control room, too.

   

Low-maintenance technology

Another, separate data centre provides the requisite redundancy, even in emergencies. “We need systems in the control room to have high availability – on a 24/7 basis – without any usage problems or risk of outage,” explains Ralf Jinschek, Senior Project Manager for IT at Frankfurt Airport. “In addition, we need stable, high-availability, low-maintenance components, including in the infrastructure technology. That’s why efficiency wasn’t the only priority for our experts when choosing a preferred cooling technology. Another key factor was which technology had lower maintenance requirements.”

Reliable cooling

Liquid Cooling Packages (LCP) from Rittal, with a cooling output of 7 KW per LCP, provide the ideal climate for the master computers – thus ensuring high IT availability. The liquid-based cooling systems are installed between the VX IT racks. The servers suck in the cold air blown in at the sides by the LCPs and feed the warmed air back into the cycle at the rear. The air/ water heat exchangers in the LCPs then recool the air.

The LCPs provide reliable climate control, and as a rack-based water cooling system, they are more space-saving and energy-efficient than an ambient-air climate control system. Another advantage of cooling with water is that it is quieter. Cooled air stays within a closed system in the racks, and doesn’t need to be arduously blown through air-conditioning units into raised floors and through perforated base plates in front of the racks.

Grünewald is delighted to say that it is not only the staff in the control room next door who benefit from the sudden quiet in the data centre. “Our service technicians no longer have to dress up warm to carry out work in the server room.” It’s a win-win situation all round!