On Feb­ru­ary 7, Syn­t­e­gon re­opened its ex­pan­ded site in Weert with the in­aug­ur­a­tion of a new of­fice build­ing and ad­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion space. The ex­pan­sion al­lows for an in­crease in pro­duc­tion and labor flex­ib­il­ity, a stronger cus­tom­er fo­cus, and sup­port for the group’s over­all sus­tain­ab­il­ity goals. The con­ver­sion of the site began in mid-March 2023 and has now been of­fi­cially com­pleted. The ce­re­mony was at­ten­ded by Tor­sten Türling, Chief Ex­ec­ut­ive Of­ficer of the Syn­t­e­gon Group, Ann Cuylaerts, Ex­ec­ut­ive Vice Pres­id­ent Food Ver­tic­al, and Paul Derckx from main con­tract­or DGA Derckx BV.

“Pro­cess ef­fi­ciency, a re­duc­tion of the car­bon foot­print, and mod­ern work­ing re­quire­ments were the main drivers of this project. We are look­ing for­ward to wel­com­ing our cus­tom­ers in this new state-of-the-art en­vir­on­ment,” says Man­aging Dir­ect­or Frank van Kuijk. 

Seam­less pro­cesses un­der one roof

Re­think­ing the use of ex­ist­ing build­ings and re­du­cing dis­tances have been a key con­cern dur­ing the en­tire site con­ver­sion – all with the aim of cre­at­ing seam­less pro­cesses that meet cus­tom­er re­quire­ments in the best pos­sible way. From now on, Syn­t­e­gon will man­u­fac­ture, as­semble as well as test and ship pack­aging equip­ment un­der one roof. To this ef­fect, the com­pany has in­ves­ted in new ware­house and pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies with a total sur­face area of 4,000 square meters, thus adding flex­ib­il­ity to the site’s man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­cit­ies. Part of the new pro­duc­tion space can be used either for test­ing or man­u­fac­ture of pack­aging solu­tions, thereby en­abling a sub­stan­tial in­crease in out­put. The pro­duc­tion fa­cil­ity’s in­creased height of 11 meters of­fers ample space for large con­struc­tions.  

Syn­t­e­gon pre­vi­ously main­tained three build­ings for a vari­ety of pur­poses in Weert. Two of them housed mech­an­ic­al pub­lic­a­tion, a Cus­tom­er Ex­per­i­ence and In­nov­a­tion Cen­ter, and of­fice spaces in the north-west part of the site, near Weert’s main canal. A third build­ing served as a fi­nal-as­sembly unit and ware­house in the south-east part of the site, close to a main trans­port route. 

Min­im­iz­ing the car­bon foot­print 

An­oth­er im­port­ant as­pect of the re­design is the site’s en­ergy us­age. Syn­t­e­gon aims to re­duce its over­all car­bon foot­print by 50 per­cent over the peri­od from 2019 to 2030. The Weert site has iden­ti­fied im­port­ant levers to help meet this goal, all of which were taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the site ex­pan­sion. “Thanks to the new site lay­out, we now have the po­ten­tial to re­duce our gas con­sump­tion by up to 60 per­cent. This would amount to an an­nu­al CO₂ re­duc­tion of 240 tons,” van Kuijk ex­plains. The gas cur­rently used in the fi­nal-as­sembly build­ing will be off­set by the use of heat pumps to sup­ply heat­ing for the man­u­fac­tur­ing and of­fice build­ings. On this basis, and in com­bin­a­tion with LED light­ing and a photo­vol­ta­ic sys­tem, Syn­t­e­gon plans to gradu­ally in­crease the share of re­new­able en­ergy con­sumed at the Weert site over the me­di­um term and thereby en­sure a sus­tain­able fu­ture. 

Both will ini­tially re­main with the fam­ily share­hold­ers of Pep­perl+Fuchs in an ad­vis­ory ca­pa­city. They will be suc­ceeded by Dr. Wil­helm Nehring as the new CEO and Mar­tin Wal­ter as the new CFO – a de­lib­er­ate and long-planned re­ju­ven­a­tion to act­ively shape the fu­ture of the com­pany. Both will take up their du­ties on May 1, 2025. 

Dr. Wil­helm Nehring most re­cently served as CEO of a mech­an­ic­al en­gin­eer­ing com­pany, and pre­vi­ously held seni­or lead­er­ship po­s­i­tions in the elec­tric­al in­dustry. Mar­tin Wal­ter was formerly Seni­or Vice Pres­id­ent of Con­trolling & Ac­count­ing at a glob­ally act­ive Ger­man in­dus­tri­al com­pany. Both have built im­press­ive ca­reers and bring fresh per­spect­ives and new im­pulses to Pep­perl+Fuchs' lead­er­ship, which the Man­nheim-based com­pany seeks to lever­age for its con­tin­ued suc­cess. The en­tire ex­ec­ut­ive board is con­vinced that the ex­pert­ise, stra­tegic mind­set, and in­nov­at­ive ap­proaches of Dr. Wil­helm Nehring and Mar­tin Wal­ter will en­rich Pep­perl+Fuchs with fresh ideas and a mod­ern lead­er­ship cul­ture, bridging the sig­ni­fic­ant gap left by Dr.-Ing. Gun­ther Kegel and Wern­er Guth­i­er.

"After more than 30 years of re­spons­ib­il­ity for this com­pany, it is nat­ur­ally not easy to let go of the reins. One does not want to leave the role without know­ing that a suc­cessor will con­tin­ue the task with just as much pas­sion. However, I am ab­so­lutely con­fid­ent in Dr. Wil­helm Nehring and Mar­tin Wal­ter: they have great po­ten­tial and also pos­sess the spir­it and vis­ion needed to lead Pep­perl+Fuchs in­to a suc­cess­ful fu­ture. They will do a fant­ast­ic job!" said Dr.-Ing. Gun­ther Kegel. To­geth­er with the fam­ily share­hold­ers and CHRO Flori­an Ochs, he has care­fully pre­pared this trans­ition over an ex­ten­ded peri­od to en­sure the com­pany’s con­tinu­ity and sta­bil­ity.

With this gen­er­a­tion­al change, Pep­perl+Fuchs is send­ing a clear sig­nal for the fu­ture: The new ex­ec­ut­ive lead­er­ship will con­tin­ue the com­pany’s suc­cess­ful tra­ject­ory while also ex­plor­ing in­nov­at­ive paths to en­sure long-term growth
 

When it comes to build­ing hy­dro­gen in­fra­struc­ture, the safety of pipelines, tanks and con­nect­ors is cru­cial, as the in­vis­ible, odor­less gas is highly flam­mable and ex­plos­ive. The Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Phys­ic­al Meas­ure­ment Tech­niques IPM in Freiburg has de­veloped sensor and meas­ure­ment sys­tems that re­li­ably de­tect even the slight­est amount of hy­dro­gen. This makes it quick and easy to de­tect leaks of all kinds.

The re­search work was part of the Tran­sHyDE hy­dro­gen flag­ship project ini­ti­ated by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Re­search (BMBF) and project man­age­ment or­gan­iz­a­tion Projektträger Jülich (PtJ). Part­ners from the re­search sec­tor and in­dustry are work­ing to­geth­er in the project to de­vel­op solu­tions for trans­port­ing and stor­ing gaseous hy­dro­gen. Dr. Car­olin Pan­nek and the team at Fraunhofer IPM were in charge of the sub­pro­ject on safe in­fra­struc­ture.

Sensors for dif­fer­ent scen­ari­os

Hy­dro­gen is used across a wide range of dif­fer­ent scen­ari­os and ap­plic­a­tions, so the Fraunhofer re­search­ers de­veloped three dif­fer­ent sensor sys­tems.

Ul­tra­son­ic sensor with pho­toacous­tic ef­fect 

Light can cause a gas to vi­brate, thereby gen­er­at­ing sound waves. The re­search­ers use this pho­toacous­tic ef­fect for their ul­tra­son­ic sensor. In this tech­no­logy, light is beamed in­to the device from a light source, gen­er­at­ing res­on­ant sound waves in the gas at a fre­quency in the ul­tra­son­ic range. When hy­dro­gen enters the con­tain­er through a mem­brane, there is a shift in res­on­ance, which changes the tone. MEMS (mi­cro-elec­tromech­an­ic­al sys­tems) mi­cro­phones re­gister the change in tone. This meth­od can be used to de­tect hy­dro­gen leak­ing out of tanks or pipelines, for ex­ample. “This sensor could be used to check con­tain­ers, pipelines or con­nect­ors. It would also be pos­sible to place mul­tiple devices around a room like smoke de­tect­ors and com­bine them in­to a sensor net­work,” ex­plains Pan­nek, the project man­ager at Fraunhofer.

But the ul­tra­son­ic sensor can do even more. It is so ac­cur­ate and pre­cise that it even re­gisters when mo­lecules of oth­er sub­stances are present in the hy­dro­gen as min­im­al levels of con­tam­in­a­tion. Fuel cells like those used to gen­er­ate elec­tri­city in trucks re­quire high-pur­ity hy­dro­gen. The slight­est con­tam­in­a­tion could dam­age the sens­it­ive mem­branes. The sensor can be used in these ap­plic­a­tions to check wheth­er the hy­dro­gen is truly pure.

Laser spec­tro­met­er 

One al­tern­at­ive to la­bor­i­ous stor­age of hy­dro­gen in high-pres­sure tanks in gaseous form or at neg­at­ive 253 de­grees Celsi­us in cryo­tanks in li­quid form is the use of am­mo­nia (NH3) as a car­ri­er mat­rix. This meth­od con­sid­er­ably sim­pli­fies both stor­age and trans­port­a­tion. But be­cause am­mo­nia is highly tox­ic, rap­id and re­li­able leak de­tec­tion is vi­tal. Fraunhofer IPM de­veloped a laser spec­tro­met­er for re­mote de­tec­tion of am­mo­nia. It ab­sorbs the wavelength of am­mo­nia, so it re­acts im­me­di­ately. The sys­tem then shows the res­ult on a dis­play. “Spe­cial­ists can hold our com­pact device in their hand to check pipelines or tanks from a safe dis­tance of as much as 50 meters. Moun­ted on a ro­bot or drone, it can be used to check in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­it­ies or fly over pipelines,” Pan­nek says.

Ra­man spec­tro­scopy 

The third meas­ure­ment sys­tem builds on the prin­ciple of Ra­man spec­tro­scopy. The Ra­man ef­fect, named for sci­ent­ist C. V. Ra­man, is pro­duced by in­ter­ac­tions between light and mat­ter. The light re­flec­ted off the mat­ter has a dif­fer­ent wavelength than the light emit­ted at the source. This means that every kind of mat­ter has its own spec­tro­scop­ic “fin­ger­print.”

Fraunhofer IPM has years of ex­per­i­ence in design­ing and con­fig­ur­ing Ra­man sys­tems. For the Tran­sHyDE project, the re­search­ers de­veloped a fil­ter-based Ra­man sensor that se­lect­ively de­tects hy­dro­gen in com­plex me­dia. The device works with low-cost com­pon­ents in­clud­ing an in­ex­pens­ive CMOS cam­era, plus it is port­able, so it can be used as a mo­bile test­ing sta­tion for quan­ti­fy­ing hy­dro­gen. The sys­tem is used in ap­plic­a­tions in­clud­ing pro­duc­tion of hy­dro­gen in the en­ergy sec­tor.

Ver­sat­ile sys­tems, ad­vice on hy­dro­gen projects 

All of the sensor sys­tems are de­signed to be ver­sat­ile so they can be ad­ap­ted for a wide range of dif­fer­ent scen­ari­os. The Fraunhofer ex­perts step in as needed to provide ad­vice to in­dustry cus­tom­ers, en­ergy sup­pli­ers and op­er­at­ors of hy­dro­gen projects on all kinds of is­sues sur­round­ing safe use.

Pan­nek is a firm be­liev­er in the fu­ture of hy­dro­gen: “The ex­pan­sion of the hy­dro­gen eco­nomy can start now.”
 

In June last year, the co­oper­a­tion between NAMUR, ZVEI and PI (PROFIB­US & PROFINET In­ter­na­tion­al) was of­fi­cially sealed. The goal is to pre­pare and de­liv­er NOA (Namur Open Ar­chi­tec­ture), an open stand­ard for ef­fi­cient and se­cure ver­tic­al com­mu­nic­a­tion at pro­cess auto­ma­tion pro­duc­tion plants. The task here is to define NOA as a stand­ard­ized chan­nel for the feed­back-free trans­mis­sion of re­quired di­git­al data to a par­al­lel second chan­nel from the field for the pur­poses of mon­it­or­ing, pro­cess op­tim­iz­a­tion and pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance. The work in the co­oper­a­tion has now be­gun and is bear­ing its first fruits. 

Util­iz­ing pre­vi­ously de­veloped use cases as a basis, and with the sup­port of avail­able test plants for de­term­in­ing the de­gree of in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity of NOA im­ple­ment­a­tions in dif­fer­ent ap­plic­a­tions, valu­able ex­per­i­ence re­veal­ing achiev­able po­ten­tial sav­ings — which in turn can point out the pos­sib­il­ity of cost re­duc­tions — is be­ing gained. This is all tak­ing place with the aim of achiev­ing a long-last­ing in­ter­op­er­able stand­ard. To this end, the co­oper­at­ing part­ners have already star­ted agree­ments with­in the frame­work of the es­tab­lished NOA Steer­ing Com­mit­tee. 

At a joint work­shop at­ten­ded by ex­perts of the co­oper­at­ing part­ners, the mem­bers of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee have eval­u­ated the use cases de­scribed in the NAMUR re­com­mend­a­tions for rel­ev­ance and ur­gency. Cru­cial top­ics have been defined, and the pri­or­it­ies and ne­ces­sary steps for the work to come have been spe­cified. 

Ready for scal­ing 

In this con­text, the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee de­cided to op­tim­ize the prac­tic­al suit­ab­il­ity of pro­vi­sions with the aid of a pi­lot plant as soon as work on the spe­cific­a­tion be­gins. The im­ple­ment­a­tions cur­rently avail­able are based on the re­quire­ments and im­ple­ment­a­tion hints spe­cified in the NAMUR re­com­mend­a­tions, mak­ing them an ex­cel­lent found­a­tion for fur­ther work. They also show that the tech­no­logy is avail­able and can now be scaled in a large num­ber of plants so ur­gently needed sav­ings po­ten­tial can also be real­ized in short or­der. The pi­lot plant provides prac­tic­al in­fra­struc­ture sim­il­ar to a Plug Fest in­to which ad­di­tion­al new im­ple­ment­a­tions are to be in­teg­rated on a con­tinu­al basis. Both this ap­proach and plant test­ing un­der real-world con­di­tions have already proven them­selves in the co­oper­at­ive ef­forts of NAMUR and ZVEI over the past few years.

Util­iz­ing find­ings from the pi­lot ap­plic­a­tions, test scen­ari­os are be­ing cre­ated which in turn sub­stan­tially con­trib­ute to the eval­u­ation of spe­cific­a­tion doc­u­ment qual­ity and the qual­ity of im­ple­ment­a­tion in in­ter­op­er­able NOA products—and they do it early in the pro­cess of cre­at­ing the spe­cific­a­tion. These test scen­ari­os then form the basis for the es­tab­lish­ment of cer­ti­fic­a­tion test­ing and pro­vi­sion of the re­quired tools in the fol­low­ing step. 

The Steer­ing Com­mit­tee will es­tab­lish Joint Work­ing Groups to carry out spe­cific­a­tion work, define qual­ity as­sur­ance meas­ures and im­ple­ment mar­ket­ing projects.
 

HAN­NOV­ER MESSE 2025 was a power­ful com­mit­ment to the fu­ture vi­ab­il­ity of in­dustry in Ger­many and Europe – in close co­oper­a­tion with its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners,” said Dr. Jochen Köckler, CEO of Deutsche Messe AG. "In a glob­al situ­ation char­ac­ter­ized by un­cer­tainty, it more than lived up to its role as a tech show, busi­ness ex­hib­i­tion, and plat­form for eco­nom­ic policy dia­log and in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion. HAN­NOV­ER MESSE is the place where the ana­log world of ma­chines is net­worked with di­git­al in­tel­li­gence – here, you can see how di­git­al­iz­a­tion and AI are mak­ing in­dus­tri­al pro­gress pos­sible.”

Around 127,000 vis­it­ors from 150 coun­tries ex­changed ideas with the 4,000 ex­hib­it­ing com­pan­ies on how they can use AI prof­it­ably, auto­mate their factor­ies, or be­come more en­ergy ef­fi­cient. More than 40 per­cent of vis­it­ors came from abroad. The most im­port­ant at­tendee coun­tries after Ger­many were China, the Neth­er­lands, Canada, Po­land, South Korea, and Ja­pan. 

“The ex­hib­it­ing com­pan­ies have im­press­ively demon­strated that, tech­no­lo­gic­ally, we hold all the cards for com­pet­it­ive, sus­tain­able and in­nov­at­ive pro­duc­tion in Ger­many and Europe. The trade fair has provided in­dustry with ori­ent­a­tion and giv­en it a boost – in what really are chal­len­ging times. In many con­ver­sa­tions, ex­hib­it­ors re­por­ted a bur­geon­ing con­fid­ence that now needs to be con­sol­id­ated,” said Köckler.

At the same time, HAN­NOV­ER MESSE was a week of clear polit­ic­al sig­nals: “However, in­dustry also needs pos­it­ive sig­nals from Ber­lin and Brus­sels by con­sist­ently elim­in­at­ing red tape, set­ting out a strong and co­ordin­ated European in­dus­tri­al policy with new free trade agree­ments, and es­tab­lish­ing re­li­able gen­er­al con­di­tions for in­vest­ment, in­nov­a­tion, and en­ergy sup­ply. Only if politi­cians and in­dustry act to­geth­er can Europe se­cure and sys­tem­at­ic­ally ex­pand its com­pet­it­ive­ness,” stated Köckler. 

The ex­hib­it­ing com­pan­ies and part­ner as­so­ci­ations also drew a pos­it­ive bal­ance:

Dr. Gun­ther Kegel, Pres­id­ent of the Ger­man Elec­tric­al and Elec­tron­ic Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­ation (ZVEI) and Chair­man of the HAN­NOV­ER MESSE Ex­hib­it­ors’ Ad­vis­ory Board: “HAN­NOV­ER MESSE has once again shown that it is the most im­port­ant plat­form for in­dus­tri­al in­nov­a­tion. AI in in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions was of par­tic­u­lar in­terest to vis­it­ors, es­pe­cially those from abroad. This shows that Ger­man in­dustry can con­tin­ue to of­fer a glob­al ori­ent­a­tion in times of tech­no­lo­gic­al change. Our com­pan­ies are lead­ers in In­dus­trie 4.0, and we are con­vinced that we can fur­ther ex­pand this very good start­ing po­s­i­tion. In­dus­tri­al AI is a new growth area that will con­tin­ue to drive the auto­ma­tion and di­git­al­iz­a­tion of in­dustry. HAN­NOV­ER MESSE will re­flect this de­vel­op­ment in the com­ing years.”

Thilo Brodtmann, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of the Ger­man Mech­an­ic­al En­gin­eer­ing In­dustry As­so­ci­ation (VDMA): “This year's HAN­NOV­ER MESSE has shown in par­tic­u­lar how im­port­ant good part­ner­ships and open mar­kets are for an ex­port and in­nov­a­tion-driv­en in­dustry such as ma­chine build­ing and plant en­gin­eer­ing. The will­ing­ness of host coun­try Canada to deep­en trade with Europe is wel­come and en­cour­aging news in a world in­creas­ingly char­ac­ter­ized by trade dis­putes. In or­der to mas­ter the ma­jor tasks that lie ahead of us, we need in­nov­a­tions such as those im­press­ively demon­strated in all halls at the event. This year, HAN­NOV­ER MESSE also sent a par­tic­u­larly strong eco­nom­ic policy sig­nal to Ber­lin: The in­dus­tri­al sec­tor ur­gently needs a loc­a­tion up­grade in or­der to con­tin­ue demon­strat­ing its in­nov­at­ive strength here in the coun­try.”

AI: num­ber one top­ic in in­dustry 

The num­ber one top­ic at this year's trade fair con­cerned AI ap­plic­a­tions for in­dustry. “AI has the po­ten­tial to change in­dustry more in just a few years than it has changed in the en­tire past dec­ade,” says Köckler. The ex­hib­it­ing com­pan­ies used spe­cif­ic ex­amples to show how man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies can be­ne­fit from ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. “Through the tar­geted use of these tech­no­lo­gies, small and me­di­um-sized en­ter­prises can also in­crease their ef­fi­ciency, re­duce costs, and sig­ni­fic­antly in­crease their com­pet­it­ive­ness,” said Köckler. 

Part­ner Coun­try Canada: a part­ner and driv­ing force 

Part­ner Coun­try Canada presen­ted it­self im­press­ively at HAN­NOV­ER MESSE. The in­nov­at­ive role of Ca­na­dian com­pan­ies and in­sti­tu­tions in key areas such as ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, di­git­al­iz­a­tion and re­new­able en­er­gies is par­tic­u­larly note­worthy. The close co­oper­a­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and the strong fo­cus on sus­tain­able tech­no­lo­gies un­der­line Canada's im­port­ance as a dy­nam­ic play­er in the glob­al mar­kets of the fu­ture.

“Canada’s part­ner coun­try year at HAN­NOV­ER MESSE 2025 was a re­sound­ing suc­cess and sig­ni­fic­antly ad­vanced our mar­ket di­ver­si­fic­a­tion goals, as Canada con­tin­ues its ef­forts to grow its pres­ence in the Ger­man and European mar­kets. We have brought the most im­press­ive Ca­na­dian del­eg­a­tion ever to at­tend an in­dus­tri­al fair. Over 500 Ca­na­dian ex­hib­it­ors and del­eg­ates from star­tups to large cor­por­a­tions lever­aged the ac­cess to Ger­man, European and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pan­ies to ex­pand their in­ter­na­tion­al foot­print. In ad­di­tion, Ca­na­dian in­nov­at­ors, re­search­ers, aca­dem­ics, and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment or­gan­iz­a­tions show­cased Canada’s tal­ent and tech­no­logy solu­tions for a glob­al audi­ence. Canada is ex­cited to play a pivotal role, with Ger­mans and Europeans, in shap­ing a fu­ture that is green, di­git­al and re­si­li­ent. We look for­ward to con­tin­ued col­lab­or­a­tion and growth across bor­ders,” said Stéphane Di­on, Spe­cial En­voy to the European Uni­on and Europe and Canada’s Head of Del­eg­a­tion at HAN­NOV­ER MESSE 2025.

The next edi­tion runs in Han­nov­er from 20 to 24 April 2026. Brazil is Part­ner Coun­try.

Com­pan­ies don’t al­ways pack­age their own products them­selves. In many cases, they out­source this step to con­tract pack­ers. Out­sourcing gives com­pan­ies ac­cess to an ex­tens­ive port­fo­lio of cut­ting-edge ma­chines – thereby sav­ing time and money. The ‘Mul­tiPac Ver­pack­ung + Mont­age GmbH’ co-pack­er, based in Ell­wan­gen in the Ger­man state of Baden-Württemberg, is spe­cial­ised in pack­aging ser­vices for sev­er­al lead­ing con­sumer goods brands. They pack­age a wide range of products in me­di­um and large quant­it­ies in­to fold­ing boxes, blister packs, trays, shrink film and car­tons, among many oth­er types of pack­aging. 

The com­pany’s own ma­chine fleet is there­fore quite ex­tens­ive, and since the sum­mer of 2024, it has also in­cluded two tog.519 co­bots from Schubert. Due to an in­creas­ing vari­ety of products and vari­ants, as well as rising la­bour and site costs, the com­pany needed an ef­fi­cient and flex­ible solu­tion for pack­aging pro­cesses that had pre­vi­ously been done manu­ally. The spe­cif­ic chal­lenge was to pick up a wide vari­ety of un­sor­ted products such as tubes, glue sticks and air freshen­er clips from the con­vey­or belt – us­ing a pick & place sys­tem – and place them in­to pre­pared trays.

Auto­ma­tion solu­tion achieves up to 60 picks per minute

Mul­tiPac needed a high-per­form­ance, state-of-the-art auto­ma­tion solu­tion that could achieve up to 60 picks per minute. Achraf Ben Salem, Head of Co­bot De­vel­op­ment at Schubert, re­ports: “When the de­cision-makers at Mul­tiPac thought of us, they ini­tially had our ul­tra-ef­fi­cient TLM ma­chines in mind – and ruled us out at first. In this case, our top-load­ing sys­tems could not be con­nec­ted to an ex­ist­ing pack­aging line. Also, this solu­tion would have re­quired more space than was avail­able at Mul­tiPac. For­tu­nately, our tog.519 co­bot proved to be a very con­vin­cing al­tern­at­ive.”

Ac­cur­ate, fast pick­ing of un­sor­ted products

Schubert’s tog.519 co­bot can pick up to 70 products one by one from a dis­ordered pile and place them ac­cur­ately in­to the des­ig­nated loc­a­tion. Its suc­cess is en­sured by the AI-sup­por­ted im­age pro­cessing de­veloped by Schubert which re­cog­nises the products it picks up and the en­vir­on­ment in which they are to be placed. As a res­ult, Mul­tiPac can dis­pense with the la­bor­i­ous task of sep­ar­at­ing tubes, pens or fra­grance clips, for ex­ample. 

The tog.519 co­bot has an­oth­er unique fea­ture as well: as soon as it has picked up a product, it con­tin­ues to col­lect in­form­a­tion about its con­di­tion, checks it and ad­justs its work steps ac­cord­ingly. For ex­ample, when pla­cing an item in­to a tray, the co­bot has to make sure that the product open­ing points in a cer­tain dir­ec­tion. This in­volves the co­bot hold­ing the items briefly in front of a cam­era, which re­cog­nises the open­ing. De­pend­ing on where the open­ing is loc­ated, the co­bot either places the product as it is or first turns it. 

The co­bot also ex­cels when it comes to format changes. A simple manu­al ad­just­ment is all it takes to change the pick & place tool. Ben Salem ex­plains: “In a pro­duc­tion space of only six square metres, we have provided Mul­tiPac with a com­pact, high-per­form­ance co­bot that en­ables ef­fi­cient, flex­ible and re­li­able pro­duc­tion. This ex­ample shows that we not only sup­port big-name man­u­fac­tur­ers, but also smal­ler com­pan­ies with a high num­ber of vari­ants – with in­nov­at­ive sys­tems that meet their spe­cif­ic needs."

Facts & fig­ures

The tog.519 cobot:

• Up to 70 picks per minute from a dis­or­gan­ised pile,
• AI-sup­por­ted im­age pro­cessing,
• Flex­ibly pro­cesses food, con­fec­tion­ery or tech­nic­al art­icles.

Hilscher has in­tro­duced a new SPE Me­dia Switch de­signed to in­teg­rate Single Pair Eth­er­net (SPE) in­to in­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net net­works. The new SPE Me­dia Switch, based on Hilscher’s mul­ti­pro­tocol-cap­able netX90 com­mu­nic­a­tion con­trol­ler, provides seam­less con­nectiv­ity for SPE ap­plic­a­tions with PROFINET, Open Mod­bus/TCP, and Eth­er­Net/IP net­works. This ready-to-use device of­fers a cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion for im­ple­ment­ing SPE in in­dus­tri­al field en­vir­on­ments.

The SPE Me­dia Switch en­ables seam­less IP-based com­mu­nic­a­tion from sensors to the cloud without the need for ad­di­tion­al, ex­pens­ive net­work com­pon­ents. This al­lows devices to be eas­ily and af­ford­ably con­nec­ted over dis­tances of up to 1.000 meters us­ing the 10BASE-T1L stand­ard, mak­ing it ideal for large pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies or widely dis­trib­uted ap­plic­a­tions.

As a mem­ber of both the Single Pair Eth­er­net Sys­tem Al­li­ance (SPE SA) and the SPE In­dus­tri­al Part­ner Net­work (SPE PN), Hilscher sup­ports both SPE con­nect­or stand­ards. The SPE Me­dia Switch is com­pat­ible with IEC 63171-2 (SPE SA) and IEC 63171-6 (SPE PN) con­nect­ors, giv­ing users the flex­ib­il­ity to choose the op­tion that best meets their needs.

The SPE Me­dia Switch is based on Hilscher’s netX 90 com­mu­nic­a­tion con­trol­ler, of­fer­ing users sev­er­al ad­vant­ages:

• A mul­ti­pro­tocol com­mu­nic­a­tion plat­form with uni­fied in­ter­faces, drivers, and tools from a single source
• netX 90 se­cur­ity-ready ar­chi­tec­ture with in­teg­rated se­cur­ity com­pon­ents
• En­ergy ef­fi­ciency with low power con­sump­tion and min­im­al heat gen­er­a­tion
• A de­vel­op­ment board with netX 90 and SPE PHYs for build­ing cus­tom SPE-en­abled field devices 
   

In PROFINET and Eth­er­Net/IP net­works, the SPE Me­dia Switch can op­er­ate in either trans­par­ent or con­figured modes. In trans­par­ent mode, data is simply routed through the SPE Me­dia Switch, which is in­vis­ible to the con­trol­ler. In con­figured mode, the switch is mapped in the con­trol­ler and can, for ex­ample, be as­signed a fixed IP ad­dress. For Open Mod­bus/TCP net­works, only trans­par­ent mode is avail­able.

Rate lim­iter en­sures re­li­able data trans­fer

To en­sure stable net­work per­form­ance and re­li­able data trans­fer, Hilscher has in­teg­rated a rate lim­iter func­tion in­to the SPE Me­dia Switch. This fea­ture helps pre­vent data loss when band­width de­creases from 100 Mbit In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net to 10 Mbit SPE.  

The unique rate lim­iter func­tion man­ages net­work traffic dur­ing high data loads by pri­or­it­iz­ing and pro­cessing In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net frames based on pre­defined para­met­ers. Ad­di­tion­ally, a flow meter mech­an­ism al­loc­ates band­width across vari­ous types of mes­sages. For ex­ample, a min­im­um of 5 Mbit can be re­served for In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net mes­sages from PROFINET and Eth­er­Net/IP in the SPE net­work, while up to 3 Mbit is al­loc­ated to uni­cast mes­sages, and a max­im­um of 1 Mbit for mul­tic­ast or broad­cast mes­sages with lower pri­or­ity.
 

Ad­vantech in­tro­duces the SPC-618WE RPL, the first ex­plo­sion-proof touch pan­el com­puter in the SPC-600 series to achieve both IECEx/ATEX Zone and Class I Di­vi­sion II (C1D2) cer­ti­fic­a­tion. This new product in­teg­rates the latest 13th gen­er­a­tion In­tel® Core™ i7 pro­cessor and a spe­cial im­pact-res­ist­ant touch pan­el de­signed spe­cific­ally for high-risk in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments, in­clud­ing the oil and gas, chem­ic­al and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al sec­tors. 

For in­tel­li­gent op­er­a­tion in haz­ard­ous en­vir­on­ments

The SPC-618WE RPL fea­tures a 13th-gen­er­a­tion In­tel® Core™ i7-1365URE deca-core pro­cessor in­teg­rated with 32GB of high-speed DDR5 memory and an in­dus­tri­al-grade sTLC SSD, en­abling smart op­er­a­tions while main­tain­ing ex­plo­sion-proof in­teg­rity. This high-per­form­ance con­fig­ur­a­tion en­ables di­git­al trans­form­a­tion in haz­ard­ous areas and sup­ports de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions such as real-time pro­cess mon­it­or­ing and multi-para­met­er ana­lys­is in chem­ic­al plants, AI-based visu­al in­spec­tion in phar­ma­ceut­ic­al pro­duc­tion lines, and big data ana­lys­is in oil re­finer­ies. The use of the latest pro­cessor plat­form also en­sures long-term product avail­ab­il­ity, help­ing cus­tom­ers to min­im­ise fu­ture up­grade and main­ten­ance costs.

Ready for glob­al use

Build­ing on haz­ard­ous area cer­ti­fic­a­tions, Ad­vantech has gained glob­al re­cog­ni­tion in ex­plo­sion-proof mar­kets with the SPC-618WE RPL through IECEx/ATEX Zone 2/22 and C1D2 cer­ti­fic­a­tions. The product in­cor­por­ates in­dus­tri­al-grade safety fea­tures, in­clud­ing an Ex-rated tempered glass touch pan­el with PCAP tech­no­logy that passes rig­or­ous im­pact tests and achieves IP66 in­gress pro­tec­tion. It op­er­ates re­li­ably in tem­per­at­ures from -20 to 60°C, meet­ing the strin­gent re­quire­ments of vari­ous haz­ard­ous en­vir­on­ments.

The SPC-618WE RPL's mul­tiple cer­ti­fic­a­tions en­able seam­less in­teg­ra­tion in­to haz­ard­ous ap­plic­a­tions in key glob­al mar­kets. Ad­vantech plans to ex­pand the SPC-600 Series product line in the second half of 2025 by in­tro­du­cing mul­tiple dis­play sizes.
 

Turck's new UHF-SYS-TUN­NEL RFID tun­nel of­fers a ready-to-use, flex­ible de­tec­tion solu­tion for the auto­ma­tion of in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics pro­cesses. The no-code tech­no­logy and a stand­ard­ized in­ter­face sim­pli­fy in­teg­ra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing sys­tems and thus ac­cel­er­ate data ac­quis­i­tion and pro­cess in­teg­ra­tion. The RFID tun­nel is de­signed for a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions in the flow of goods on con­vey­or belt ap­plic­a­tions and is ideal for in­com­ing and out­go­ing in­spec­tions as well as bulk de­tec­tion in pro­duc­tion and ware­house lo­gist­ics. The multi-tag func­tion and the closed hous­ing en­sure re­li­able de­tec­tion, even with large quant­it­ies of goods.

The all-in-one solu­tion con­sists of a UHF read­er with four power­ful an­ten­nas, match­ing coaxi­al cables and a closed tun­nel hous­ing with all brack­ets and screws for quick in­stall­a­tion. The pre­fab­ric­ated mech­an­ic­al struc­ture and the stand­ard­ized set with just one part num­ber en­able er­ror-free and fast com­mis­sion­ing.
 

To provide its cus­tom­ers in the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al in­dustry with worry-free op­er­a­tion and data in­teg­rity in com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceut­ic­al reg­u­la­tions and stand­ards, Ana­lytik Jena has re­leased a new FDA 21 CFR Part 11 soft­ware mod­ule for their new TOC/TNb ana­lyz­ers of the multi N/C x300 series. Thanks to the new func­tions, cus­tom­ers be­ne­fit from sig­ni­fic­ant time sav­ing and ease of use when car­ry­ing-out audit-proof ana­lyses in this strictly reg­u­lated in­dustry. The new soft­ware of­fers many com­fort­able func­tions: It elim­in­ates manu­al cal­cu­la­tion and doc­u­ment­a­tion steps, like for sys­tem suit­ab­il­ity tests (SST), thus re­du­cing ef­fort to a min­im­um. It also provides a clear over­view over user roles and meth­od or res­ult ver­sions. With it, cus­tom­ers work much more con­veni­ently and ef­fi­ciently and re­duce the risk of er­rors as­so­ci­ated with manu­al doc­u­ment­a­tion. 

En­sur­ing guideline con­firm­ity

New fea­tures in­clude, amongst oth­ers, a user man­age­ment sys­tem for as­sign­ing roles and edit­ing rights to team mem­bers, serv­er-based cent­ral data man­age­ment to store data from mul­tiple in­stru­ments and ac­cess them from any com­puter, de­tailed audit trail and ver­sion­ing with com­ment func­tions, and elec­tron­ic sig­na­tures fol­low­ing the dual con­trol prin­ciple. The new mod­ule en­sures con­form­ity with in­ter­na­tion­al guidelines, such as FDA 21 CFR part 11, and provides built-in TOC SST func­tions com­pli­ant to USP <643> stand­ards for bulk wa­ter and sterile wa­ter, EP 2.2.44, JP 2.59, and the KP. The new soft­ware mod­ule is avail­able as an ad­di­tion­al op­tion and is com­pat­ible with all multi N/C x300 ana­lyz­ers op­er­at­ing un­der mul­ti­Win pro. 

Soft­ware val­id­a­tion ser­vices for this mod­ule are avail­able as part of Ana­lytik Jena’s equip­ment qual­i­fic­a­tion ser­vice pack­age. It shortens the time un­til the op­er­a­tion­al re­lease of the device and sig­ni­fic­antly re­duces cus­tom­ers ef­forts.
 

This in­tro­duced pro­to­type is the res­ult of in­tens­ive col­lab­or­a­tion between Yokogawa and Pep­perl+Fuchs and demon­strates the pos­sib­il­it­ies. The de­velopers showed live at the fair how cyc­lic data traffic works simply and trans­par­ently. En­gin­eer­ing is based on the con­trol­ler's stand­ard tools us­ing FF-H1 func­tion blocks.

Proxy tech­no­logy, which acts as an in­tel­li­gent in­ter­face between FF-H1 and Profinet, provides the basis. The con­trol sys­tem and Field­Con­nex field switch com­mu­nic­ate via the Profinet pro­tocol. Con­trolled and con­figured by the con­trol sys­tem, the switch seam­lessly trans­lates the pro­cess val­ues in­to the FF-H1 pro­tocol and en­sures that ex­ist­ing devices can re­main in op­er­a­tion without re­stric­tions. The sys­tem auto­mat­ic­ally handles stand­ard tasks such as set­ting ad­dresses and com­mu­nic­a­tions para­met­ers. The switch provides a sep­ar­ate link mas­ter for each device, thus en­sur­ing the fast­est pos­sible re­sponse times.

The en­gin­eer­ing sys­tem uses the ex­ist­ing and cer­ti­fied device de­scrip­tions of the field devices. This im­ple­ment­a­tion based on stand­ards en­sures a high de­gree of func­tion­al re­li­ab­il­ity and in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity while avoid­ing the ex­pense of product main­ten­ance and re-cer­ti­fic­a­tion. This solu­tion concept im­presses with its ease of im­ple­ment­a­tion for users and man­u­fac­tur­ers alike - as they are en­titled to ex­pect in times of di­git­al­iz­a­tion.

Con­nec­tion bey­ond in­stru­ment­a­tion with Eth­er­net-APL, Pep­perl+Fuchs has also show­cased in Han­nov­er con­nect­ing in­stru­ments. Avail­able today are: Profib­us PA via Proxy in Profinet and 4-20 mA sig­nal and HART via re­mote I/O. Pep­perl+Fuchs in­vites users and sup­pli­ers to talk shop, dis­cuss the pro­tec­tion of the ex­ist­ing in­stru­ment­a­tion and the fu­ture of di­git­al com­mu­nic­a­tion in the field of pro­cess plants.
 

Re­cently, the European Uni­on (EU) an­nounced its highly an­ti­cip­ated leg­al re­quire­ment con­cern­ing meth­ane reg­u­la­tion (ht­tps://eur-lex.europa.eu/leg­al-con­tent/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202401787). Un­like the re­cently fi­nal­ized meth­ane and oil and gas emis­sions leak de­tec­tion and re­pair (LDAR) rules from the United States En­vir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) late last year, this rule is sig­ni­fic­antly more strin­gent, re­quir­ing both de­tec­tion AND quan­ti­fic­a­tion of meth­ane gas. With this ad­di­tion­al lay­er of de­tail, com­pan­ies can bet­ter un­der­stand their emis­sion im­pact and pro­duce more ac­cur­ate in­vent­or­ies of meth­ane emis­sions.

This re­quire­ment builds on the fi­nal ap­prov­al EU min­is­ters gave their re­spect­ive gov­ern­ments’ to im­pose meth­ane emis­sions lim­its on Europe's oil and gas im­ports from 2030 (ht­tps://www.re­u­ters.com/sus­tain­ab­il­ity/cli­mate-en­ergy/eu-ap­proves-law-hit-gas-im­ports-with-meth­ane-emis­sions-lim­it-2024-05-27), pres­sur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers to cut leaks of the po­tent green­house gas.

This latest an­nounce­ment (ht­tps://en­ergy.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-meth­ane-reg­u­la­tion-re­duce-harm­ful-emis­sions-fossil-fuels-europe-and-abroad-2024-05-27_en) puts the rule in place, re­quir­ing meth­ane leak de­tec­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies spe­cific­ally of up­stream ex­plor­a­tion and pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing all types of wells, along with fossil gas gath­er­ing, pro­cessing, trans­mis­sion, dis­tri­bu­tion, and un­der­ground stor­age in­clud­ing li­que­fied nat­ur­al gas ter­min­als. This rul­ing also ap­plies to op­er­at­ing un­der­ground and sur­face coal mines along with closed or aban­doned un­der­ground coal mines.

The rul­ing re­flects the EU’s long-term com­mit­ment to re­du­cing emis­sions. Ac­cord­ing to data from the EU’s Green House Gas (GHG) In­vent­ory Re­port (ht­tps://www.eea.europa.eu/en/ana­lys­is/pub­lic­a­tions/an­nu­al-european-uni­on-green­house-gas-2), more than half of all dir­ect en­ergy sec­tor meth­ane emis­sions is due to un­in­ten­tion­al re­lease of emis­sions in­to the at­mo­sphere. There­fore, EU au­thor­it­ies be­lieve that fo­cus­ing on loc­at­ing and fix­ing meth­ane leaks, or LDAR, can cre­ate a sub­stan­tial dent in emis­sions to­wards achiev­ing its re­spect­ive cli­mate goals.

Un­der­stand­ing timelines, leak types, and meas­ure­ment

Now that the rule is im­ple­men­ted, af­fected or­gan­iz­a­tions have vari­ous timelines to con­sider for con­duct­ing dif­fer­ent types of leak tests as part of com­pre­hens­ive LDAR pro­gram. For all above­ground and un­der­ground com­pon­ents, ex­clud­ing trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­bu­tion net­works, leak de­tec­tion and re­pair sur­veys shall be con­duc­ted based on the fol­low­ing timelines:

The fol­low­ing ta­ble out­lines the leak de­tec­tion and re­pair sur­veys min­im­um fre­quen­cies for all com­pon­ents of trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­bu­tion net­works:

In the above tables, Tyle 1 LDAR sur­veys refer gen­er­ally to gross leak de­tec­tion and re­pair sur­veys, es­sen­tially the lar­ger leaks that have the greatest in­flu­ence on the en­vir­on­ment, and thus gen­er­ally re­quire more fre­quent in­spec­tion. In con­trast, Type 2 LDAR sur­veys refer to loc­at­ing smal­ler, more gran­u­lar leaks, and thus those in­spec­tions are gen­er­ally longer in fre­quency.

QOGI – the Most Ef­fect­ive Tech­no­logy for Com­plet­ing Type 1 LDAR Sur­veys
For Type 1 LDAR sur­veys, spe­cific­ally, QOGI (Quant­it­at­ive Op­tic­al Gas Ima­ging) of­fers an ex­tremely ef­fect­ive and ef­fi­cient meth­od to quickly loc­ate large leaks defined as those “17 grams/hour at stand­ard tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure” as out­lined in Art­icle 14 of the reg­u­la­tion lit­er­at­ure (ht­tps://eur-lex.europa.eu/leg­al-con­tent/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202401787). In con­trast, Type 2 LDAR leaks are defined as 5 grams/hour at stand­ard tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure.

To achieve ef­fect­ive Type 1 LDAR sur­vey cap­ab­il­ity, QOGI of­fers nu­mer­ous ad­vant­ages. First, not only will in­spect­ors need to de­tect meth­ane leaks, they must also de­tect the size of such leaks and act quickly to re­medi­ate leaks at 17 grams/hour or more, as noted above.

Fur­ther­more, the rule states that in­spect­ors must meas­ure emis­sions at “each po­ten­tial emis­sions source,” and as close as pos­sible, mean­ing in­spect­ors can­not rely on aer­i­al in­spec­tion tools alone. In­stead, in­spect­ors will need QOGI devices to get close enough to de­tect and meas­ure the ex­act leak points for re­pair, but still re­main at a safe stan­doff dis­tance. This is­sue is com­poun­ded by the fact the rule re­quires re­pairs to be at­temp­ted quickly--with­in 5 days of de­tec­tion and then com­pleted with­in 30 days.

Ac­cord­ing to Steve Beyn­on, Dir­ect­or of Sales for FLIR’s Op­tic­al Gas Ima­ging ver­tic­al, util­iz­ing the latest OGI tech­no­logy has al­ways been at the fore­front to em­power com­pan­ies to meet reg­u­lat­ory goals.

“We have been work­ing with all as­pects of the EU for years to help em­power the in­dustry to lever­age tech­no­logy in meth­ane emis­sions mit­ig­a­tion and feel that Op­tic­al Gas Ima­ging has a fun­da­ment­al role in the fu­ture of meth­ane mit­ig­a­tion in the EU,” said Beyn­on.

Tools such as the FLIR QL320 OGI com­pan­ion device (ht­tps://www.flir.de/products/flir-ql320) as well as built-in quan­ti­fic­a­tion from the latest FLIR G-Series cam­er­as (ht­tps://www.flir.de/products/flir-g-series) provide ef­fect­ive meth­ods to sat­is­fy the latest EU reg­u­la­tions around meth­ane leak de­tec­tion and mit­ig­a­tion. These highly ad­vanced solu­tions al­low op­er­at­ors to quanti­fy emis­sions at a safe dis­tance through ad­vanced ana­lyt­ics lever­aging FLIR’s OGI cam­era tech­no­logy.

However, the use of such tools re­quires some tech­no­lo­gic­al know­ledge, un­der­stand­ing of the ap­plic­a­tion and train­ing on the sci­ence of OGI and use of the cam­er­as. This reg­u­la­tion re­quires LDAR op­er­at­ors to be trained. There are oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions to re­view when ac­quir­ing the most ef­fect­ive tool for the job and Flir can help when train­ing or sup­port is needed.

WIKA's di­git­al tem­per­at­ure trans­mit­ter, the T38, has all the ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al ap­provals and is avail­able world­wide just one year after its mar­ket launch. Thanks to its in­nov­at­ive drift de­tec­tion, the trans­mit­ter en­sures an even high­er level of pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity. The T38 can also be used flex­ibly, as its six sensor con­nec­tion ter­min­als al­low count­less pos­sible com­bin­a­tions with in­put sensors.

True Drift De­tec­tion is a new mon­it­or­ing func­tion de­veloped by WIKA. Thanks to the per­man­ent mon­it­or­ing by means of two per­fectly matched sensors, a drift­ing sensor can be de­tec­ted im­me­di­ately. This al­lows the op­er­at­or to in­ter­vene im­me­di­ately in the event of faulty meas­ure­ments to guar­an­tee pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity at all times. The tem­per­at­ure trans­mit­ter meets all the re­quire­ments of IEC 61508 and is de­signed for uni­ver­sal use. A head-moun­ted and rail-moun­ted ver­sion, as well as SIL and vari­ous Ex ver­sions of the T38 are avail­able for cus­tom­ised in­teg­ra­tion. All ver­sions can be pro­grammed us­ing the HART® pro­tocol with a wide range of open con­fig­ur­a­tion tools.
 

Dur­ing a month-long field test con­duc­ted by KECO in col­lab­or­a­tion with a lead­ing va­por re­cov­ery unit (VRU) man­u­fac­turer, KECO's Oxy­Hound pro­cess gas ana­lyz­er demon­strated su­per­i­or per­form­ance com­pared to tra­di­tion­al elec­tro­chem­ic­al ana­lyz­ers. The test fo­cused on meas­ur­ing oxy­gen levels in gas streams. Dur­ing the test, both the Oxy­Hound and a con­ven­tion­al elec­tro­chem­ic­al ana­lys­er were set up to meas­ure oxy­gen levels in a gas stream. The data col­lec­ted was in­teg­rated in­to the VRU com­pany's SCADA sys­tem, which took read­ings every two minutes. The res­ults showed that the Oxy­Hound sig­ni­fic­antly out­per­formed the elec­tro­chem­ic­al ana­lys­er in terms of ac­cur­acy and re­li­ab­il­ity. 

The Oxy­Hound uses ad­vanced quench lu­min­es­cence tech­no­logy for gas sampling to en­sure ac­cur­ate oxy­gen meas­ure­ment. This meth­od uses the de­cay of light emit­ted by a spe­cif­ic lu­mino­phore over time to ac­cur­ately de­term­ine the par­tial pres­sure of oxy­gen. The ana­lys­er tracks changes in light phase and in­tens­ity between the ex­cit­a­tion light and the fluor­es­cence re­sponse. The on-board com­puter uses this data to cal­cu­late oxy­gen levels in real time.

Long sensor life

A cost ana­lys­is between the two tech­no­lo­gies re­vealed that the elec­tro­chem­ic­al in­stru­ments re­quired cell re­place­ment at least twice a year due to ex­pos­ure to wa­ter. The es­tim­ated an­nu­al re­place­ment cost was ap­prox­im­ately $1,000. In con­trast, Oxy­Hound's quench lu­min­es­cence tech­no­logy is non-con­sum­able, re­quires no con­sum­ables and only oc­ca­sion­al sensor re­cal­ib­ra­tion. These factors sig­ni­fic­antly re­duced both cost and la­bour.

While elec­tro­chem­ic­al ana­lys­ers are sus­cept­ible to li­quid con­tam­in­a­tion, the Oxy­Hound can op­er­ate in en­vir­on­ments with con­tam­in­ants such as H₂S, CO₂, H₂, pro­pyl­ene, meth­an­ol and eth­an­ol mix­tures. Its in­sens­it­iv­ity to vari­ous gases makes it ideal for ap­plic­a­tions in nat­ur­al gas pipelines, re­finer­ies, bio­gas pro­duc­tion, chem­ic­al plants, land­fills, wastewa­ter treat­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing, food and bever­age, and re­new­able en­ergy sec­tors. The ana­lys­er is de­signed for use in Di­vi­sion 2 & Zone 2 haz­ard­ous loc­a­tions. 

Meter­ing batches of li­quids may seem straight­for­ward at first glance - in­stall a flow­met­er in the product line, con­nect it to an in­stru­ment, con­trol the meas­ure­ment with on-board soft­ware, wire in a valve, enter your re­quired volume, press a but­ton and the right amount of li­quid is dis­pensed in­to your ves­sel. However, real-world ap­plic­a­tions re­veal a host of com­plex­it­ies that must be ad­dressed to achieve pre­cise and re­peat­able res­ults.

Today’s ad­vanced pro­cess and li­quid hand­ling sys­tems de­mand highly pre­cise flow meas­ure­ment. From adding wa­ter to food pro­duc­tion mix­ers, dis­pens­ing fla­vour­ings to beer or cider at point of sale, to hand­ling ag­gress­ive chem­ic­als, even slight in­con­sist­en­cies in sys­tem design can lead to in­ac­curacies, wasted product, or dis­rup­ted pro­cesses. 

For batch­ing sys­tems, the crit­ic­al factor is re­peat­ab­il­ity – en­sur­ing the re­quired volume is de­livered con­sist­ently every time. To achieve this, ideally the sys­tem should main­tain con­sist­ent pro­cess con­di­tions, however, this is not al­ways feas­ible. For in­stance, tem­per­at­ure fluc­tu­ations throughout the day can al­ter flu­id vis­cos­ity and volu­met­ric flow meas­ure­ments. Sim­il­arly, a de­crease in the feed li­quid tank level sup­ply­ing the pro­cess pump can re­duce the dis­pens­ing rate, im­pact­ing the ac­cur­acy of the flow meter and the flow con­trol valve. There­fore, as a start­ing point, batch­ing sys­tem designs should aim to min­im­ise as many vari­ables as pos­sible with­in a reas­on­able cost. Once this found­a­tion is es­tab­lished, equip­ment such as flow meters, pumps, and valves can be se­lec­ted to ef­fect­ively com­pensate for any para­met­er vari­ations.

Ti­tan’s NSF-Ap­proved Bever­age Flow­met­er is de­signed spe­cific­ally as a flow meas­ure­ment solu­tion for the drink dis­pens­ing mar­ket. With its ex­cep­tion­al re­peat­ab­il­ity, this low-cost device is in­stalled around the world en­abling in­dus­tries to un­lock high­er yields, wheth­er in bever­age pro­cessing equip­ment or a bar tap wall in a res­taur­ant.

Ap­plic­a­tions of Li­quid Flow Meas­ure­ment and Con­trol in Batch Pro­cesses in­clude:

Batch­ing In­gredi­ents in Juice Pro­cessing

Fruit juice pro­duc­tion re­lies on ac­cur­ate flow meas­ure­ment of small quant­it­ies of in­gredi­ents to main­tain product qual­ity. Li­quid flow meters mon­it­or and con­trol the dis­pense of wa­ter, fla­vour­ings, sweeten­ers, and oth­er in­gredi­ents, en­sur­ing the right pro­por­tions for op­tim­al fla­vour and shelf life. High-pre­ci­sion flow­met­ers provide re­peat­able meas­ure­ments, in­dis­pens­able for main­tain­ing product con­sist­ency.

Li­quid Batch Dis­pens­ing in Beer Walls

In­cor­por­ated as part of an in­stalled beer wall, the valves and flow­met­ers count and con­trol the dis­pens­ing of beer at the bar taps. Ti­tan’s low-cost NSF-Ap­proved bever­age tur­bine meters are used by long-term Amer­ic­an cus­tom­er, a self-pour tech­no­logy com­pany, in their self-pour bever­age walls, to ac­cur­ately meas­ure and con­trol dis­pensed beer at self-serve coun­ters. 

Flow Switch­ing in Bot­tling Op­er­a­tions

In bot­tling op­er­a­tions, re­li­able li­quid flow in­dic­a­tion pre­vents costly dis­rup­tions. In­line flow switches de­tect and man­age crit­ic­al scen­ari­os such as product flow loss, en­sur­ing ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tions. Sev­er­al food and drink man­u­fac­tur­ers use Ti­tan’s mini tur­bine flow­met­ers as low-cost al­tern­at­ive flow switches. Flow switches also con­trol car­bon di­ox­ide ad­di­tion, halt bot­tling lines when ne­ces­sary, and pre­vent re­fri­ger­ant or chiller shut­downs, en­abling max­im­um pro­cess ef­fi­ciency.

Crit­ic­al Con­sid­er­a­tions for Li­quid Batch­ing Sys­tems

• Sys­tem Re­peat­ab­il­ity: Hy­draul­ic sta­bil­ity is es­sen­tial. Air pock­ets in the line can lead to dy­nam­ic flow situ­ations, caus­ing volu­met­ric er­rors in de­liv­ery. En­sur­ing a hy­draul­ic­ally locked sys­tem elim­in­ates such vari­ab­il­ity and en­hances re­peat­ab­il­ity.
• Stable Pro­cess Con­di­tions: Changes in pres­sure, tem­per­at­ure, or flow rate can push flow­met­ers in­to un­pre­dict­able op­er­a­tion­al zones, af­fect­ing cal­ib­ra­tion and ac­cur­acy. Main­tain­ing con­sist­ent con­di­tions is vi­tal for re­li­able per­form­ance.
• Pulsat­ing Flow Man­age­ment: Se­lec­tion of the pump type is im­port­ant to avoid pulsat­ing flow. Pulsa­tion from cer­tain pumps can dis­rupt flow rates, es­pe­cially in ag­gress­ive chem­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions. Pres­sure reg­u­lat­ors and pulsa­tion dampers should be in­cor­por­ated in­to flow sys­tems to achieve a smooth and con­stant flow.
• Stra­tegic Place­ment of Flow­met­ers: Po­s­i­tion­ing the flow­met­er just be­fore the dis­pense valve min­im­ises flu­id in­er­tia and im­proves meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy.
• Un­der­stand­ing Flow­met­er Res­ol­u­tion: Low-res­ol­u­tion meters, such as those with one pulse per litre, may lack pre­ci­sion in small batch ap­plic­a­tions. However, go­ing too high in res­ol­u­tion is an un­ne­ces­sary ex­pense when choos­ing equip­ment. Se­lect­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate res­ol­u­tion for the task is crit­ic­al for re­li­able per­form­ance.
• Valve Se­lec­tion and Cal­ib­ra­tion: The type of shut-off valve used can im­pact de­liv­ery ac­cur­acy. Fast-act­ing solen­oids are ideal for smal­ler pipelines, while lar­ger setups be­ne­fit from solu­tions like multi-stage shut-off sys­tems or “batch over­run com­pens­a­tion” pro­gram­ming to fine-tune res­ults.
• Op­tim­ising Elec­tron­ic Flow­met­ers: High-per­form­ance batch­ing meters (such as Ti­tan’s ul­tra­son­ic At­rato® flow­met­er) can pre­dict stop sig­nals in ad­vance, en­sur­ing con­sist­ent de­liv­ery even at high speeds.
   

En­han­cing Pro­cess Ef­fi­ciency

By ac­count­ing for these factors dur­ing sys­tem design and com­mis­sion­ing, en­gin­eers can elim­in­ate com­mon pit­falls in li­quid meter­ing and achieve ex­tremely good ac­cur­acy. And in­vest­ing in the ap­pro­pri­ate flow meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy that suits the ap­plic­a­tion re­quire­ments will en­sure that the batch­ing sys­tem per­forms with pre­ci­sion and con­sist­ency.
 

The cost of high-end sensors can be neg­li­gible in com­par­is­on with the pro­cesses and as­sets that they help to man­age and pro­tect. Pro­cess man­agers should there­fore in­vest in meas­ure­ment tech­no­lo­gies that have been proven to de­liv­er stable, ac­cur­ate re­li­able meas­ure­ments in the long-term. 

Sensor se­lec­tion

The suit­ab­il­ity of a sensor for a spe­cif­ic ap­plic­a­tion can be de­term­ined by a quick ex­am­in­a­tion of its data­sheet. For ex­ample, the sensor will need to op­er­ate with­in a known range of tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure, it will provide an ac­cept­able out­put sig­nal and it will de­liv­er meas­ure­ments with­in a claimed level of ac­cur­acy and pre­ci­sion. However, there are sev­er­al im­port­ant factors to con­sider when choos­ing sensors. Bey­ond ac­cur­acy, these in­clude sta­bil­ity, re­li­ab­il­ity, and any vari­ance in per­form­ance due to pro­cess or en­vir­on­ment­al con­di­tions.

Sta­bil­ity is per­haps the most im­port­ant cri­terion be­cause sensors must be ac­cur­ate and re­li­able even in de­mand­ing en­vir­on­ments, fol­low­ing in­stall­a­tion and in the long-term. The spe­cific­a­tions of dif­fer­ent sensor sup­pli­ers may state sim­il­ar ac­curacies, but this does not provide in­sights or veri­fic­a­tion of sensor ac­cur­acy after one year, or sev­er­al years. All sensors drift, but some drift more than oth­ers, and some drift more quickly, while oth­ers have good sta­bil­ity with min­im­al drift­ing, main­tain­ing meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy for years. There­fore, the sta­bil­ity of sensors should be the most im­port­ant factor to con­sider be­cause it in­flu­ences per­form­ance and costs over a long time and is re­flec­ted in cal­ib­ra­tion and main­ten­ance re­quire­ments.

Giv­en the po­ten­tial costs of long-term un­re­li­ab­il­ity, it is im­port­ant to con­sider the life­time cost of sensors, and not just their pur­chase cost.

In ad­di­tion to good sta­bil­ity, high-qual­ity in­stru­ments are also easy to main­tain, cal­ib­rate, ad­just, and fine-tune, which lowers life­time costs and is good news for op­er­a­tion and main­ten­ance staff. Hav­ing con­veni­ent tools for veri­fy­ing and main­tain­ing the sensors and trans­mit­ters en­hances re­li­ab­il­ity and provides peace of mind throughout the life of the in­stru­ment­a­tion.

The cost of in­ac­cur­acy can be large

Cool­ing rep­res­ents a high pro­por­tion of the costs and car­bon foot­print of run­ning a data­centre. Vais­ala par­ti­cip­ated in a data­centre tri­al to sim­u­late how much more en­ergy would be used if there was just one-de­gree of tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment er­ror, caus­ing ex­cess­ive cool­ing. The res­ults showed that this one-de­gree of er­ror in­creased en­ergy con­sump­tion by more than 8.5%. Giv­en the size of mod­ern data­centres and as­sum­ing the same de­vi­ation can take place over a dec­ade, this seem­ingly tiny er­ror trans­lates in­to many mil­lions of euros of ex­tra costs, par­tic­u­larly if serv­er up­time is af­fected.

Meas­ure­ment in­fra­struc­ture to bring en­ter­prise muscle to SMEs 

Tra­di­tion­ally only large cor­por­a­tions have had the re­sources to build meas­ure­ment in­fra­struc­tures with ad­vanced fea­tures such as re­mote mon­it­or­ing, firm­ware up­dates and easy scalab­il­ity. Vais­ala Echo con­nects Vais­ala meas­ure­ment devices and mon­it­or­ing soft­ware to cre­ate an in­tel­li­gent meas­ure­ment in­fra­struc­ture, without the re­quire­ment, and cost, of de­vel­op­ing a be­spoke solu­tion.

In prac­tice, cus­tom­ers will not need to buy Echo sep­ar­ately, be­cause it is a built-in fea­ture for Echo-com­pat­ible Vais­ala meas­ure­ment products. Simple to set up and run, Echo provides re­li­able, al­ways-on ac­cess to data and alerts from all com­pat­ible devices, with re­mote firm­ware up­dates for all con­nec­ted devices.

A ma­jor be­ne­fit of Echo is easy ac­cess to com­pre­hens­ive re­port­ing – both cur­rent and his­tor­ic. Echo re­ports cur­rent con­di­tions in real-time and en­ables no­ti­fic­a­tions/alerts, and all data is en­cryp­ted in trans­it and rest, and se­cured with di­git­al cer­ti­fic­ates.

Case study: saus­age cas­ings

A team of UK pro­cess en­gin­eers has de­veloped a tech­nique for man­u­fac­tur­ing col­la­gen saus­age cas­ings which pro­tects product qual­ity and trebles out­put. The pro­cess re­lies on pre­cise mon­it­or­ing of tem­per­at­ure and hu­mid­ity with Vais­ala sensors, com­bined with multi-stage feed­back con­trol. 

The man­u­fac­ture of col­la­gen saus­age skins from an­im­al hide is a good ex­ample of sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion be­cause it re­cycles a waste product in­to a valu­able com­mod­ity that helps to im­prove the qual­ity and con­sist­ency of saus­ages. However, all saus­age cas­ings are del­ic­ate and re­quire pre­cise con­di­tions and care­ful hand­ling dur­ing man­u­fac­ture, stor­age and dis­tri­bu­tion, and throughout the sub­sequent saus­age man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess.

Nat­ur­al cas­ings from the small in­test­ine of meat an­im­als tend to be vari­able in length, dia­met­er and thick­ness, so they are not ideal for high-speed saus­age man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses. In con­trast, col­la­gen cas­ings of­fer re­li­able, con­sist­ent fea­tures, and are there­fore ideal for fast, ef­fi­cient pro­cesses. Also, col­la­gen cas­ings do not need to be stored in chilled con­di­tions and have a longer shelf-life than tra­di­tion­al cas­ings. However, saus­age cas­ings are del­ic­ate, so pre­cise man­age­ment of hand­ling pro­cesses and en­vir­on­ment­al con­di­tions is es­sen­tial.

Col­la­gen cas­ings are ready to use straight out of the pack­age, horn load­ing is quick and easy, and there is no re­quire­ment for soak­ing and un­tangling of bundles. In com­par­is­on with saus­ages in nat­ur­al cas­ings, there are no sea­son­al vari­ations, and saus­ages man­u­fac­tured in col­la­gen cas­ings of­fer im­proved cook­ing cov­er­age which de­liv­ers a su­per­i­or cooked ap­pear­ance 

Pri­or to the de­vel­op­ment of a new product hand­ling sys­tem, the saus­age skin man­u­fac­turer util­ised a con­vey­or­ised flat sheet col­la­gen dry­er, but this cre­ated fric­tion that could lead to rip­ping and product wastage. The pro­cess was slow and waste­ful, so the en­gin­eers were chal­lenged to de­vel­op a new, less dam­aging tech­nique for dry­ing and pro­cessing the ex­truded cyl­indric­al col­la­gen cases. A key fea­ture of the new pro­cess would be to min­im­ise fric­tion and op­tim­ise both tem­per­at­ure and hu­mid­ity, ir­re­spect­ive of the plant’s geo­graph­ic­al loc­a­tion.

The new pro­cessing solu­tion al­lows the cas­ings to be in­flated with hot, de­hu­mid­i­fied pro­cess air provided by a silica-based de­sic­cant ro­tor. New equip­ment was also de­veloped for trans­port­ing the in­flated gel us­ing an in­nov­at­ive hand­ling sys­tem. 

The new sys­tem em­ploys three pre­ci­sion sensors. A Vais­ala HMT120 hu­mid­ity trans­mit­ter mon­it­ors en­vir­on­ment­al hu­mid­ity, so that dry air can be re­cir­cu­lated when out­side con­di­tions are too hu­mid. In ad­di­tion, two Vais­ala DMP5 dew­point trans­mit­ters mon­it­or pro­cess air to en­sure that the col­la­gen products are main­tained in ideal con­di­tions by a multi-stage feed­back con­trol sys­tem.

The HMT120 trans­mit­ter con­tains Vais­ala’s HUM­I­CAP® tech­no­logy; a thin-film poly­mer-based ca­pa­cit­ive hu­mid­ity sensor, which de­liv­ers ac­cur­acy, re­li­ab­il­ity, long-term sta­bil­ity and is in­sens­it­ive to con­dens­a­tion or con­tam­in­a­tion.

The DMP5 dew­point trans­mit­ters in­cor­por­ate the Vais­ala DRY­CAP® sensor, which is also de­signed for ac­cur­acy, re­li­ab­il­ity and sta­bil­ity. The sensor is con­dens­a­tion-res­ist­ant and is im­mune to con­tam­in­a­tion, however, the high level of per­form­ance de­livered by this tech­no­logy is based on a ca­pa­cit­ive thin-film poly­mer sensor and an autocal­ib­ra­tion func­tion. The sensor also has a rap­id re­sponse time and fast re­cov­ery after wet­ting.

Case study: bak­ing ovens

Cli­mate change, en­vir­on­ment­al con­cerns and rising en­ergy prices are driv­ing de­mand for im­proved ef­fi­ciency across all in­dus­tries; not least in food pro­duc­tion where pro­cesses in­volving bak­ing ovens can run at tem­per­at­ures of up to 325°C. Bühler’s latest in­dir­ect-fired con­vec­tion ovens, there­fore aim to in­crease ef­fi­ciency in line with the com­pany’s stra­tegic com­mit­ment to help cus­tom­ers make sub­stan­tial sav­ings in en­ergy, wa­ter, and product wastage.

By mon­it­or­ing hu­mid­ity levels ac­cur­ately in­side an oven, it is pos­sible con­trol the pro­cess to main­tain a con­sist­ent bak­ing pro­file, even with fluc­tu­ations in am­bi­ent con­di­tions or in­gredi­ent qual­ity. This en­ables a more con­sist­ent product in terms of spread, thick­ness, col­our­ing, and oth­er im­port­ant in­dic­at­ors of qual­ity. This im­proved con­sist­ency also helps to min­im­ise wastage.

Ovens with built-in meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy en­able pro­cess man­agers to con­trol the hu­mid­ity and tem­per­at­ure of their ovens more ef­fect­ively, which can be par­tic­u­larly valu­able for those pro­du­cing mul­tiple products with dif­fer­ent bak­ing pro­files.

Sum­mary

The ap­plic­a­tions high­lighted above demon­strate the crit­ic­ally im­port­ant role of ac­cur­ate stable meas­ure­ments, which high­lights the need to in­vest in proven, high-qual­ity sensors, par­tic­u­larly when the costs of not do­ing so can be so great.

In data­centres ac­cur­ate tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment can save enorm­ous en­ergy costs, in bak­ing ovens ac­cur­ate sensors can im­prove product qual­ity, save en­ergy and re­duce wastage, and in saus­age skin man­u­fac­ture ac­cur­ate sensors save time, re­duce waste and in­crease pro­ductiv­ity three-fold.
 

ProM­in­ent's new beta/X smart meter­ing pump util­ises the com­pany's latest tech­no­logy. It is ideal for a wide range of meter­ing ap­plic­a­tions, provid­ing re­li­able, ro­bust and ver­sat­ile per­form­ance. An en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly PFAS-free ver­sion of the beta/ X is also avail­able. Every as­pect of the beta/X is de­signed to sim­pli­fy use. In a first for the beta range, dose rate is set with a simple turn of an in­tu­it­ive click wheel and dis­played on an LCD screen. This elim­in­ates the need for com­plex stroke or fre­quency cal­cu­la­tions. With a wide range of dos­ing ca­pa­cit­ies from 10 ml/h to 50 l/h, this pump is a ver­sat­ile solu­tion. It is ideal for a wide range of dos­ing ap­plic­a­tions.

The new range also al­lows you to see the pump's per­form­ance from a dis­tance with a 360-de­gree status dis­play with three col­oured LED lights. An im­proved mount­ing sys­tem al­lows the pump to be in­stalled and ser­viced in a single click, either ho­ri­zont­ally or ver­tic­ally on a wall, us­ing a side or base moun­ted brack­et.

Easy pro­gram­ming and con­fig­ur­a­tion

Com­pared to the pre­vi­ous mod­el, the re­designed dos­ing heads of­fer even great­er pre­ci­sion of ± 1%, im­proved suc­tion power and a 1:1000 turndown ra­tio. Thanks to the wide ad­just­ment range, beta/X re­quires only four dos­ing heads in total. This sim­pli­fies se­lec­tion and re­duces the num­ber of spare parts re­quired for main­ten­ance. A Near Field Com­mu­nic­a­tion (NFC) in­ter­face makes it easy to trans­fer beta/X device and status in­form­a­tion to a mo­bile phone. Quick pro­gram­ming and con­fig­ur­a­tion of the pump can also be car­ried out via an app us­ing the in­teg­rated Bluetooth® wire­less tech­no­logy. 

With Dul­con­nex, a cloud-based mon­it­or­ing sys­tem, you can take re­mote mon­it­or­ing to the next level and view the beta/X along with all your ProM­in­ent smart products in one place and use its in­vent­ory man­age­ment cap­ab­il­it­ies to keep an eye on tank levels re­motely. 
 

Li­quid and gas flow con­trol spe­cial­ist Bürkert has launched a range of valves de­signed to con­trol ul­tra high-pres­sure flow for hy­dro­gen in­fra­struc­ture ap­plic­a­tions. The range in­cludes solen­oid valves and pro­cess valves that can con­trol hy­dro­gen up to 1,000 bar, suit­able for grid in­fra­struc­ture and vehicle fuel­ling sta­tions. The valves are de­signed for a long ser­vice life and meet all the re­quired safety con­form­ance for hy­dro­gen in­fra­struc­ture.

The valves are de­signed for high-pres­sure hy­dro­gen ap­plic­a­tions in­clud­ing com­pres­sion, stor­age, and trans­port. The range comes in­to its own down­stream of Hy­dro­gen Pro­duc­tion via elec­tro­lys­is when the gas needs to be com­pressed to either store it or trans­port it. Bürkert’s new range is also cap­able of man­aging hy­dro­gen sup­ply for vehicle fuel­ling sta­tions.

Solen­oid valves

The solen­oid valve range for on/off con­trol con­sists of a dir­ect act­ing valve and two servo-as­sisted valves. The Type 6080 dir­ect act­ing valve can open or close without any as­sist­ance from the me­dia passing through the valve and can op­er­ate from 0 Barg. It can man­age pres­sures up to 900 bar, and is avail­able with ori­fice dia­met­ers in­clud­ing 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm.

The Type 6480 and 6481 servo-as­sisted valves rely on a pres­sure dif­fer­en­tial across the valve to help it open and close. The type 6480 re­quires a 5-bar pres­sure dif­fer­en­tial while the 6481 needs a 1 bar pres­sure dif­fer­en­tial. The Type 6480 servo pis­ton valve can con­trol hy­dro­gen flow up to 1,000 bar and is avail­able with an 8 mm ori­fice. The Type 6481 is suit­able for hy­dro­gen pres­sures up to 450 bar and is avail­able in ori­fice dia­met­ers between 12 mm and 50 mm.

The valves can achieve high­er switch­ing cycles and ex­ten­ded main­ten­ance in­ter­vals thanks to spe­cial coat­ings ap­plied to the wet­ted com­pon­ents that ex­tend the ser­vice life.

Bürkert’s new range for ul­tra high-pres­sure hy­dro­gen ap­plic­a­tions also in­cludes the Type 2111 and Type 2121 pro­cess valves for on/off con­trol, which are pneu­mat­ic­ally op­er­ated. The Type 2121 is avail­able with 12 mm to 50 mm ori­fice dia­met­ers and can man­age hy­dro­gen up to 600 bar. The Type 2111 fea­tures 4 mm and 8 mm ori­fice dia­met­ers and is able to handle hy­dro­gen up to 1,000 bar.

Pro­cess valves

The pro­cess valves achieve high tight­ness for dy­nam­ic seal­ing thanks to a dy­nam­ic seal­ing ring on the spindle. The valves are also de­signed for re­li­able and long-life use, fea­tur­ing a ro­bust one-piece design that min­im­ises wear. In ad­di­tion, they are highly res­ist­ant to hy­dro­gen em­brit­tle­ment, thanks to stain­less steel con­struc­tion, and fea­ture ad­di­tion­al fin­ish­ing on pres­sure-bear­ing, mov­ing parts. 

All the valves in Bürkert’s new range for ul­tra high-pres­sure hy­dro­gen ap­plic­a­tions pass con­form­ance to en­sure safety. The valves are de­signed to with­stand twice the stated hy­dro­gen pres­sure and all valves in series pro­duc­tion are tested to one-and-a-half times the work­ing pres­sure. To pre­vent leak­age, all valves are tested in series pro­duc­tion to 5 x 10-5 mbar l/s. Mean­while, re­si­li­ent ma­ter­i­als in­clud­ing 316Ti stain­less steel re­in­forced with ti­tani­um, pre­vent hy­dro­gen em­brit­tle­ment.

Strin­gent design and test­ing mean the valves achieve ISO 19880-3 for gaseous hy­dro­gen – fuel­ling sta­tions. This cov­ers the re­quire­ments and test meth­ods for the safety per­form­ance of high-pres­sure gas valves used in hy­dro­gen sta­tions up to the H70 des­ig­na­tion. The valves also meet Pres­sure Equip­ment Dir­ect­ive 2014/68/EU, and for use in haz­ard­ous areas, they achieve ATEX Zone 1 IECEx Cat. II.
 

LE­WA GmbH has sig­ni­fic­antly im­proved the per­form­ance of its LE­WA eco­flow® LDG pro­cess pump. Pumps of the eco­flow series are hy­draul­ic­ally ac­tu­ated pro­cess dia­phragm pump in mod­u­lar con­struc­tion. 
The up­graded mod­el de­liv­ers a 15% in­crease in hy­draul­ic power with­in the same foot­print. The de­vel­op­ment en­ables op­er­at­ors to be­ne­fit from bet­ter per­form­ance with no in­crease in in­stall­a­tion space or cost. For ex­ample, ap­ply­ing the im­proved eco­flow LDG at a flow rate of 300 l/h in­creases the max­im­um dis­charge pres­sure from 659 bar to 713 bar. Con­versely, at 100 bar dis­charge pres­sure the max­im­um flow rate in­creases from 2600 l/h to 2950 l/h. 

Re­duced space re­quire­ments

Op­tim­ising pro­ductiv­ity in pro­cessing ap­plic­a­tions is a con­stant chal­lenge. It re­quires the right com­bin­a­tion of pres­sure and flow rate, and space is al­ways at a premi­um. En­han­cing the power-to-foot­print ra­tio of the eco­flow LDG pump en­ables cus­tom­ers to spe­cify a smal­ler unit and achieve high­er per­form­ance. Com­pared to the next pump size in the eco­flow range, the LDG can re­duce space re­quire­ments by up to 40%. 

Re­in­for­cing LE­WA's com­mit­ment to con­tinu­ous in­nov­a­tion, the up­graded eco­flow LDG rep­res­ents a power in­crease from 35kN to 40kN. This in­nov­at­ive ap­proach is aligned with the im­prove­ments made last year to its lar­ger sis­ter pump, the LE­WA eco­flow LDZ, which raised power out­put from 45kN to 50kN and im­proved its per­form­ance by 10%. 

Mod­u­lar sys­tem for a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions

The LDG is part of the LE­WA eco­flow fam­ily, an ex­tens­ive mod­u­lar sys­tem of dia­phragm and packed plun­ger meter­ing pumps that com­bines eight drive sizes with six dif­fer­ent pump heads. This mod­u­lar design al­lows for a high de­gree of cus­tom­isa­tion. Fur­ther op­tions in­clude dif­fer­ent ma­ter­i­als and valve types that can be com­bined to meet spe­cif­ic ap­plic­a­tion cri­ter­ia in­clud­ing tem­per­at­ure, com­press­ib­il­ity, flow rate and pres­sure. The eco­flow can handle ag­gress­ive, ab­ras­ive, tox­ic, and flam­mable flu­ids to meet di­verse ap­plic­a­tions in the en­ergy sec­tor, chem­ic­al pro­duc­tion, pharma, and food and bever­age.

Renowned for leak tight­ness, op­er­a­tion­al safety and re­li­ab­il­ity, LE­WA eco­flow pumps provide highest meter­ing ac­cur­acy, even at high pres­sures. Their pre­cise and re­pro­du­cible flow rate can be ad­ap­ted via stroke length and speed, of­fer­ing a broad meter­ing range of 1:100 for flex­ible ad­just­ment to dif­fer­ent tasks.
 

Con­tro­lAir is pleased to an­nounce the re­lease of the CG330 and CG340 gas reg­u­lat­ors. This in­nov­at­ive range has been spe­cific­ally de­signed to meet the grow­ing de­mand for low emis­sion solu­tions in in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions us­ing com­pressed gases such as in­ert gases, nat­ur­al gas and oth­er sens­it­ive me­dia. The range of com­pressed gas fil­ter reg­u­lat­ors is de­signed to provide ac­cur­ate pres­sure con­trol with near-zero at­mo­spher­ic leak­age un­der dy­nam­ic or steady-state flow con­di­tions. Ideal for ap­plic­a­tions that must com­ply with strin­gent fu­git­ive emis­sion reg­u­la­tions, these rugged reg­u­lat­ors provide users with ex­cep­tion­al re­li­ab­il­ity, op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency and en­vir­on­ment­al safety.

Pre­cise reg­u­la­tion

The series en­sures near-zero at­mo­spher­ic leak­age (less than 0.1 scfh (0.05 Nl/min)) for reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance. They are avail­able in 1/4" and 1/2" NPT port sizes with out­put pres­sure ranges of 0-30 psig, 0-60 psig and 0-120 psig to meet vari­ous ap­plic­a­tion re­quire­ments. Con­struc­ted of die-cast alu­mini­um al­loy with an irid­ite and baked epoxy fin­ish for long-term per­form­ance in harsh en­vir­on­ments and a wide range of me­dia com­pat­ib­il­ity, the reg­u­lat­ors can handle air, in­ert gas and sweet nat­ur­al gas with­in tem­per­at­ure lim­its of 0°F to 160°F (manu­al drain) or 32°F to 160°F (auto­mat­ic drain).

The CG330/CG340 reg­u­lat­ors are ideal for in­dus­tries such as oil and gas, chem­ic­al pro­cessing and any op­er­a­tion where pre­cise pres­sure con­trol and en­vir­on­ment­al safety are crit­ic­al.
 

The new double-stage air com­pressors of the DS series from AERZEN com­press ab­so­lutely oil-free in ac­cord­ance with ISO 8573-1, class 0 and guar­an­tee out­stand­ing per­form­ance in al­most all ap­plic­a­tion areas at dif­fer­en­tial pres­sures between 5.5 and 10.5 bar. Ap­plic­a­tions in sec­tors such as the food and bever­age in­dustry, chem­ic­al and pro­cess en­gin­eer­ing as well as med­ic­al and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al tech­no­logy place the highest re­quire­ments on com­pressed air qual­ity. After all, im­pur­it­ies in the com­pressed air such as dust, mois­ture, oils or mi­croor­gan­isms have an im­pact on product qual­ity and the pro­duc­tion pro­cess. With its DS series, AERZEN now of­fers new smart and ef­fi­cient air com­pressors for oil-free com­pres­sion.

Ex­cep­tion­ally high en­ergy ef­fi­ciency 

The new double-stage screw com­pressors are avail­able in nine sizes from 55 to 315 kW and volume flows from 180 to 2,920 m3/h. They re­li­ably provide 100% oil-free pro­cess air (cer­ti­fied ac­cord­ing to ISO 8573-1 Class 0) and achieve en­ergy sav­ings of up to 12% com­pared with the best-per­form­ing com­pressor mod­els cur­rently avail­able on the mar­ket. This leap in ef­fi­ciency is achieved by in­nov­at­ive bare-shaft com­pressors with new, highly ef­fi­cient 4+6 ro­tor pro­files in the low and high-pres­sure stages and mo­tors with en­ergy ef­fi­ciency class IE4 or IE5. A vari­able fre­quency drive is in­teg­rated and guar­an­tees op­tim­um op­er­a­tion with a large turndown. The DS series is equipped with a dir­ect drive us­ing a coup­ling and gear drive for op­tim­um drive ef­fi­ciency and has stain­less steel ro­tors in both stages to pre­vent cor­ro­sion.

Max­im­um re­li­ab­il­ity and dur­ab­il­ity  

The com­pressed air pack­ages have been de­signed for max­im­al re­li­ab­il­ity and dur­ab­il­ity, and they achieve out­stand­ing per­form­ance even in ex­treme cli­mat­ic con­di­tions. An ef­fect­ive seal­ing concept for the drive shaft and con­vey­ing cham­ber min­im­ises nat­ur­al seal wear. The smart oil concept with oil cool­er, elec­tric­al oil pres­sure switch for a con­stant oil level check and a mech­an­ic­al oil pump con­trib­ute to the high level of ro­bust­ness and en­ergy ef­fi­ciency. The oil-lub­ric­ated anti-fric­tion bear­ings with pres­sure lub­ric­a­tion achieve a ser­vice life of at least 40,000 hours.

Max­im­um en­ergy ef­fi­ciency, qual­ity, dur­ab­il­ity and re­li­ab­il­ity, paired with min­im­al main­ten­ance ef­fort/costs and low noise levels - these are the new double-stage, oil-free screw com­pressors in the DS series. The pro­cess air gen­er­a­tion is of course PFAS-free, without com­prom­ising on per­form­ance and dur­ab­il­ity. Thanks to the ex­tremely com­pact design, the ma­chine foot­print is small. The smart pack­age concept even fa­cil­it­ates side-by-side in­stall­a­tion, as main­ten­ance can be car­ried out from both the op­er­at­ing and the rear sides. The en­tire pack­age can eas­ily be trans­por­ted us­ing a pal­let truck, fork­lift truck or crane.
 

Al­though re­l­at­ively new, the MAXXDRIVE® in­dus­tri­al gear units from NORD DRIVESYS­TEMS are among the es­tab­lished drive solu­tions for heavy-duty ap­plic­a­tions. Apart from con­vey­ing, lift­ing and driv­ing, mix­ing and agit­at­ing are among the most im­port­ant ap­plic­a­tion areas. 

MAXXDRIVE® in­dus­tri­al gear units from NORD DRIVESYS­TEMS can be found in all in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions, where high per­form­ance and high ra­tios are re­quired. They achieve out­put torques of up to 282,000 Nm and powers of up to 6,000 kW. Their tor­sion­ally ri­gid, one-piece UNI­CASE™ hous­ing en­sures a long ser­vice life as it can handle high axi­al and ra­di­al loads. Through con­tinu­ous de­vel­op­ment of the series, the sys­tem man­u­fac­turer of drive solu­tions serves more and more in­dustry-spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments, for ex­ample sizes with ex­ten­ded centre dis­tance for use in lift­ing gear.

Power­ful mix­ing

An im­port­ant ap­plic­a­tion area is agit­at­ing and mix­ing, which is es­sen­tial in bio­gas plants, for ex­ample. Only by thor­oughly blend­ing the products to be fer­men­ted, a ho­mo­gen­eous mass is ob­tained that provides op­tim­um am­bi­ent con­di­tions for mi­crobes with re­gard to tem­per­at­ure, vis­cos­ity and acid­ity. If the mi­crobes are act­ive, they pro­duce suf­fi­cient bio­gas. The bio­gas plant ex­pan­sion of the Dutch Smits Groep’s large-scale ag­ri­cul­tur­al unit, however, presen­ted the de­sign­ers of the mix­ing tech­no­logy with a chal­lenge. Con­trary to stand­ard prac­tice, the ro­tat­ing agit­at­ors had to blend a rect­an­gu­lar base of about 1,200 m² in­stead of a cir­cu­lar one. An­oth­er dif­fi­culty was the fact that more con­crete pil­lars than roof girders had been placed in the towers.

ATEX-com­pli­ant power

The Dutch sys­tem man­u­fac­turer Jongia Mix­ing Tech­no­logy de­veloped a concept, where two high-per­form­ance agit­at­ors per tower en­sure the bio­gas pro­duc­tion. This is im­ple­men­ted us­ing MAXXDRIVE® in­dus­tri­al gear units. Each agit­at­or with 4.5-metre agit­at­or shafts is driv­en by a NORD in­dus­tri­al gear unit. The ap­plic­a­tion uses a total of 16 ATEX-com­pli­ant gear units with a speed ra­tio of 123:1, powers of 37 kW and an out­put torque of al­most 29,000 Nm. The bio­gas plant has been in op­er­a­tion for al­most one year now. The Smits Group is sat­is­fied. They already plan the con­struc­tion of an­oth­er bio­gas plant with eight fer­menters to fur­ther in­crease their bio­gas volume. Once again with the par­ti­cip­a­tion of: Jongia and NORD.