On April 17 BASF, SAB­IC, and Linde have in­aug­ur­ated the world’s first demon­stra­tion plant for large-scale elec­tric­ally heated steam crack­ing fur­naces. Fol­low­ing three years of de­vel­op­ment, en­gin­eer­ing, and con­struc­tion work, the reg­u­lar op­er­a­tion of the demon­stra­tion plant is now ready to start at BASF’s Ver­bund site in Lud­wig­shafen, Ger­many. In March 2021 the three com­pan­ies signed a joint agree­ment to de­vel­op and demon­strate solu­tions for elec­tric­ally heated steam crack­ing fur­naces.

Steam crack­ers play a cent­ral role in the pro­duc­tion of ba­sic chem­ic­als and re­quire a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of en­ergy to break down hy­dro­car­bons in­to ol­efins and aro­mat­ics. Typ­ic­ally, the re­ac­tion is con­duc­ted in fur­naces at tem­per­at­ures of about 850 de­grees Celsi­us. Up to now, these tem­per­at­ures have been reached by us­ing con­ven­tion­al fuels. The demon­stra­tion plant aims to show that con­tinu­ous ol­efin pro­duc­tion is pos­sible us­ing elec­tri­city as a heat source. By us­ing elec­tri­city from re­new­able sources, the new tech­no­logy has the po­ten­tial to re­duce CO₂ emis­sions of one of the most en­ergy-in­tens­ive pro­duc­tion pro­cesses in the chem­ic­al in­dustry by at least 90% com­pared to tech­no­lo­gies com­monly used today.

Gath­er­ing data and ex­per­i­ence

The demon­stra­tion plant, which pro­duces ol­efins, such as ethyl­ene, pro­pyl­ene, and pos­sibly also high­er ol­efins from sat­ur­ated hy­dro­car­bon feed­stock, is fully in­teg­rated in­to the ex­ist­ing steam crack­ers in Lud­wig­shafen. The up­com­ing op­er­a­tion serves the goal of gath­er­ing data and ex­per­i­ences about ma­ter­i­al be­ha­vi­or and pro­cesses un­der com­mer­cial op­er­at­ing con­di­tions for the fi­nal de­vel­op­ment of this in­nov­at­ive tech­no­logy to in­dus­tri­al mar­ket ma­tur­ity. In two sep­ar­ate demon­stra­tion fur­naces, two dif­fer­ent heat­ing con­cepts will be tested. While in one fur­nace, dir­ect heat­ing ap­plies an elec­tric cur­rent dir­ectly to the crack­ing coils, in the second fur­nace, in­dir­ect heat­ing uses ra­di­at­ive heat of heat­ing ele­ments placed around the coils. 
The two elec­tric­ally heated fur­naces to­geth­er pro­cess around 4 tons of hy­dro­car­bon feed­stock per hour and con­sume 6 mega­watts of re­new­able en­ergy.

To sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of the nov­el fur­nace tech­no­logy, the project was gran­ted €14.8 mil­lion by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Cli­mate Ac­tion un­der its “De­car­bon­iz­a­tion in In­dustry” fund­ing pro­gram. The pro­gram is sup­port­ing en­ergy-in­tens­ive in­dus­tries in Ger­many in their ef­forts to achieve car­bon neut­ral­ity.

“With the de­vel­op­ment of elec­tric­ally op­er­ated steam crack­ing fur­naces, we are get­ting our hands on a key tech­no­logy that will help to sig­ni­fic­antly re­duce green­house gas emis­sions in the chem­ic­al in­dustry. It fills me with pride and joy that we have achieved this suc­cess to­geth­er with our part­ners SAB­IC and Linde. The demon­stra­tion plant here in Lud­wig­shafen will provide us with valu­able ex­per­i­ence on the fi­nal step to­wards the in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tion of this tech­no­logy”, said Dr. Mar­tin Brudermüller, Chair­man of the Board of Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­ors of BASF SE. 

Ab­dulrah­man Al-Fageeh, CEO of SAB­IC stated; “The e-fur­nace’s tech­no­logy holds huge po­ten­tial for the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the glob­al pet­ro­chem­ic­al in­dustry. It can demon­strate the role that re­new­able elec­tri­city can play in high­er ef­fi­ciency and low-emis­sion chem­ic­al pro­cessing. Through close col­lab­or­a­tion, team­work, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty de­vel­op­ment, and ad­van­cing the best tech­nic­al solu­tions hol­ist­ic­ally, the teams at SAB­IC, BASF and Linde have brought this project to this key stage. We are proud to be here to­geth­er today to cel­eb­rate the power of col­lect­ive ac­tion on our jour­ney to­ward a cir­cu­lar car­bon eco­nomy.”

“It is our com­mon goal to demon­strate that it is pos­sible to elec­tri­fy the pet­ro­chem­ic­al in­dustry and to op­er­ate a steam crack­er with sus­tain­ably gen­er­ated elec­tri­city. This out­stand­ing joint project is a sig­ni­fic­ant proof of how to­geth­er we can de­vel­op ground-break­ing tech­no­lo­gies that will ad­vance us on the jour­ney to­wards net-zero CO₂ emis­sions and cli­mate-neut­ral in­dustry,” said Jürgen Nowicki, CEO of Linde En­gin­eer­ing. “The STAR­BRIDGE™ tech­no­logy brings the vis­ion of an emis­sion-free pet­ro­chem­ic­al in­dustry a step closer.”

Based on the com­bined know­ledge and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty of the three parties col­lab­or­at­ing to de­vel­op the new tech­no­lo­gies, the demon­stra­tion unit in Lud­wig­shafen will be op­er­ated by BASF. Linde was re­spons­ible for the en­gin­eer­ing, pro­cure­ment, and con­struc­tion of the plant. Linde will in the fu­ture com­mer­cial­ize the de­veloped tech­no­lo­gies un­der the new trade­mark STAR­BRIDGE™, en­abling the pet­ro­chem­ic­al in­dustry to de­car­bon­ize by re­pla­cing con­ven­tion­al fired tech­no­lo­gies.
 

“HAN­NOV­ER MESSE 2024 was both an in­dus­tri­al power­house and a tech­no­logy trade fair for the fu­ture,” re­marked Dr. Jochen Köckler, Chair­man of the Man­aging Board, Deutsche Messe AG, at the clos­ing press con­fer­ence for HAN­NOV­ER MESSE 2024. “It was an in­dus­tri­al power­house be­cause vis­it­ors found an­swers to how they can prof­it­ably take ad­vant­age of auto­ma­tion, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, hy­dro­gen and many oth­er high-tech solu­tions in their factor­ies, thus mak­ing them fit for the fu­ture. And it has been a fu­ture-ori­ented tech­no­logy trade fair, since the in­nov­a­tions that drive in­dus­tri­al com­pet­it­ive­ness and sus­tain­ab­il­ity were on dis­play here.”

Highly in­ter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors

The more than 130,000 vis­it­ors from 150 na­tions traded ideas with some 4,000 ex­hib­it­ing com­pan­ies on ways of di­git­al­iz­ing their value chains and mak­ing them more re­si­li­ent. “This means we achieved our am­bi­tious vis­it­or tar­get in a year where HAN­NOV­ER MESSE was smal­ler due to the bi­en­ni­al ro­ta­tion of sev­er­al of its com­pon­ent events,” said Köckler. More than 40 per­cent of vis­it­ors came from abroad. Apart from the host na­tion of Ger­many, the top vis­it­or na­tions were China, the Neth­er­lands, South Korea, the United States and Ja­pan.

Dr. Gun­ther Kegel, Pres­id­ent of the ZVEI as­so­ci­ation and Chair­man of the HAN­NOV­ER MESSE Ex­hib­it­or Ad­vis­ory Board, stated: “In the cur­rent dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic en­vir­on­ment, this year’s Han­nov­er Messe is a key mor­ale boost­er. Com­pan­ies from the elec­tric­al and di­git­al in­dustry have im­press­ively demon­strated how in­nov­a­tions, es­pe­cially the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, are open­ing up new op­tions for more cli­mate pro­tec­tion and great­er ef­fi­ciency in en­ergy con­sump­tion and the use of re­sources. But also for more op­tim­ism. We can con­fid­ently take on ma­jor so­cial chal­lenges such as curb­ing glob­al warm­ing if we ad­opt the right meas­ures and con­sist­ently pur­sue the path to­wards elec­tri­fic­a­tion, di­git­al­iz­a­tion and auto­ma­tion. Han­nov­er Messe has once again made the in­nov­at­ive strength of our com­pan­ies vis­ible and thus made an im­port­ant con­tri­bu­tion to strength­en­ing Ger­many as an in­dus­tri­al loc­a­tion,” he con­cluded.

Thilo Brodtmann, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of the VDMA as­so­ci­ation, ad­ded, “Think­ing far bey­ond day-to-day mat­ters and de­vel­op­ing solu­tions for di­git­al and cli­mate-neut­ral pro­duc­tion – that is the goal of in­nov­at­ive mech­an­ic­al en­gin­eer­ing firms. At this year’s HAN­NOV­ER MESSE, they demon­strated how factor­ies can be con­trolled more in­tel­li­gently, how cli­mate pro­tec­tion can be achieved more quickly with mod­ern means of pro­duc­tion and how autonom­ous sys­tems can make pro­duc­tion safer and more ef­fi­cient on many levels. In ad­di­tion, bio­logy and its pro­cesses will move in­to pro­duc­tion – the first steps here have already been taken. Han­nov­er Messe re­mains the best place for all these in­nov­a­tions and for a true spir­it of op­tim­ism, be­cause man­u­fac­tur­ers, cus­tom­ers, polit­ic­al de­cision-makers and the me­dia come to­geth­er here in great­er num­bers than any­where else.”

From solu­tions such as the auto­ma­tion of en­tire pro­duc­tion plants, the voice con­trol of ma­chines us­ing AI, the ef­fi­cient use of hy­dro­gen in in­dustry to the use of soft­ware to re­cord and re­duce the car­bon foot­print, HAN­NOV­ER MESSE offered a com­pre­hens­ive pic­ture of the tech­no­lo­gic­al op­por­tun­it­ies for the in­dustry of today and to­mor­row. New fields such as the “bio­lo­giz­a­tion” of the eco­nomy and car­bon man­age­ment were also brought in­to fo­cus. And the ini­ti­at­ive to cre­ate sov­er­eign data spaces for small and me­di­um-sized in­dus­tri­al en­ter­prises un­der the “Man­u­fac­tur­ing X” la­bel is also gain­ing mo­mentum.

HAN­NOV­ER MESSE 2025 runs from 31 March to 4 April. Canada will be fea­tured as the part­ner coun­try.

thyssenkrupp Uhde and Genesis Fertilizers Limited Partnership ("Genesis Fertilizers”) have signed a Pre-FEED (frontend engineering and design) contract to conceptually develop an integrated fertilizer complex to be located at Belle Plaine, Saskatchewan in Canada. The proposed plant will be designed to produce 1,500 mtpd (metric tons per day) of ammonia, 2,600 mtpd of urea/UAS granulation, nitric acid and UAN plus the ability to produce Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF).

Focus on emission reduction

thyssenkrupp Uhde will provide engineering solutions for the integration of the above-listed objectives as a component of this Pre-FEED arrangement, with a key focus on minimizing plant emissions. thyssenkrupp Uhde's proven EnviNOx® technology, for example, will almost completely eliminate nitrogen oxides from nitric acid production. Furthermore, the design of the plant will consider the potential use of renewable-based hydrogen and electricity.

Jason Mann, President and CEO of Genesis Fertilizers: “Our primary goal is to ensure the supply of fertilizers to the farmers in Western Canada based on the most advanced technologies available with the lowest possible carbon footprint. We are pleased to be working with a strong industry partner that offers expertise in all the processes and technologies involved from a single source.”

Lucretia Löscher, COO thyssenkrupp Uhde: “This project is a further proof that the transition of the fertilizer industry towards more sustainability has started. Our expertise in clean fertilizer technologies and their integration is essential to support our customers on their journey to protect the climate.”

thyssenkrupp Uhde has more than 100 years of experience in the engineering and construction of chemical plants, with more than 2,500 built in total. 130 ammonia and fertilizer plants have been built, including some of the largest plants in the world. 

Ethernet-APL technology is a revolution in the process industry: for the first time, a high data rate (10 Mbit/s) is combined with intrinsic safety for the field level. In addition, the technology enables a two-wire operation including power supply. KROHNE was a founding member of the Ethernet-APL consortium in 2018 and has thus actively promoted the technical design of the standard.

Customer interest in Ethernet-APL has been growing steadily for several years, particularly in the chemical industry, but also beyond. "With Ethernet-APL, we are fully digitalizing the field level," explains Dr Christoph Spiegel, Head of Strategic Product Management in the Electronics Division at KROHNE. "Our demonstrators already have most of the functions that are possible with this technology. They provide the implementation of PROFINET according to the PA (Process Automation) profile 4.0 with generic or alternatively manufacturer-specific GSD file. There is also an FDI package for use with all modern asset management systems and an integrated web server with a convenient user interface for simple commissioning and diagnostics."

On the way to first APL products

“We hope that we can obtain early feedback and test results via the demonstrators, including interoperability test results with various host systems," continues Spiegel. "We want to strengthen our customers' trust in KROHNE as a reliable partner that brings the latest technology into practice at an early stage. Ethernet-APL is still a very young technology, which is why we are working particularly closely with users here. Looking at the progress of the project, I am confident that KROHNE will be able to present the first Ethernet-APL devices by the end of the fourth quarter of 2024."
 

En­dress+Haus­er has writ­ten the next chapter in its suc­cess story. The spe­cial­ist for meas­ure­ment and auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy marked its 70th birth­day in 2023, with cel­eb­ra­tions world­wide. It also pre­pared the way for a change at the helm. And to cap it all off, the Group re­cor­ded strong fig­ures for in­com­ing or­ders, sales, profit and em­ploy­ment. En­dress+Haus­er is cau­tiously op­tim­ist­ic about 2024, the com­pany de­clared at the an­nu­al me­dia con­fer­ence in Re­in­ach, Switzer­land.

Dr Peter Seld­ers took over as the Group’s CEO at the start of this year, hav­ing pre­vi­ously served as man­aging dir­ect­or of the com­pet­ence cen­ter for level and pres­sure meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy. His pre­de­cessor, Mat­thi­as Al­ten­dorf, is now pres­id­ent of the Su­per­vis­ory Board. “Our com­mon goal is to po­s­i­tion En­dress+Haus­er well for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” Al­ten­dorf said. Seld­ers stated that he would foster the fam­ily-owned com­pany’s fur­ther de­vel­op­ment “with long-term think­ing and ac­tion.” 

En­dress+Haus­er star­ted 2023 with a re­cord high volume of or­ders on hand. While the eco­nom­ic mo­mentum slowed ap­pre­ciably in the second half of the year, the com­pany per­formed bet­ter than ex­pec­ted. “Our or­gan­ic growth was so strong that both the neg­at­ive cur­rency ef­fects and the loss of our Rus­sia busi­ness couldn’t slow us down too much,” Al­ten­dorf said.

Growth in all re­gions and sec­tors

The Group’s net sales rose in 2023 by 11.0 per­cent to 3.719 bil­lion euros. “Ex­change rate ef­fects cost us 3.9 per­cent of growth,” ex­plained CFO Dr Luc Schul­the­iss. All sec­tors and re­gions con­trib­uted to the year’s pos­it­ive per­form­ance. Growth in Europe and the Amer­icas was above av­er­age; the greatest im­petus came from the Middle East; and the USA moved up past China as the Group’s top-selling mar­ket, with Ger­many com­ing a dis­tant third.

All core in­dus­tries de­livered good growth, with only the chem­ic­al sec­tor in Europe per­form­ing weakly due to high en­ergy prices. En­dress+Haus­er shipped more than 2.9 mil­lion sensors and sys­tems world­wide in 2023. While the pro­cess busi­ness per­formed well, the labor­at­ory busi­ness con­tin­ued its de­cline as a res­ult of the fall-off of the pan­dem­ic-re­lated surge in de­mand. There was also a de­cline in the Group’s sensor busi­ness, which in­cludes cyc­lic­al sec­tors such as build­ing tech­no­logy.

Prof­it­ab­il­ity im­proved

Be­cause ma­ter­i­al and per­son­nel costs rose at a slower pace than sales, the Group’s op­er­at­ing profit grew by 20.3 per­cent to 573.0 mil­lion euros. Re­turn on sales (ROS) climbed 0.6 points to 14.4 per­cent des­pite high­er costs for in­terest and cur­rency hedging. Net in­come im­proved by 14.5 per­cent to 408.7 mil­lion euros against the back­ground of a slight in­crease in the tax rate. 

Cap­it­al in­vest­ments and in­nov­a­tions

In 2023 the Group in­ves­ted 260.6 mil­lion euros in build­ings and ma­chinery, an in­crease of 8.4 per­cent. Over the past five years the Group has in­ves­ted 1.131 bil­lion euros of its own funds in im­proved in­fra­struc­ture and high-per­form­ance net­works, and plans for projects worth 570 mil­lion euros are cur­rently un­der­way. The largest of these projects in­volve the Group’s loc­a­tions in Maul­burg, Ger­many; Su­zhou, China; Jena, Ger­many; Shang­hai, China; Green­wood, In­di­ana, USA; and Wald­heim, Ger­many.

In­nov­a­tion across the board is a key driver of growth for En­dress+Haus­er. The Group has over 1,300 people dir­ectly in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of new products, and in 2023 it spent 267.6 mil­lion euros, rep­res­ent­ing about 7.2 per­cent of its net sales, on re­search and de­vel­op­ment, an in­crease of 10.4 per­cent com­pared with 2022. En­dress+Haus­er has around 8,900 pat­ents and pat­ents pending, and 257 ini­tial pat­ent fil­ings around the world testi­fy to the sheer in­nov­at­ive power of its people.

Key role in the sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion of the in­dustry

At the end of 2023 the Group had 16,532 em­ploy­ees – 715 more than at the same time in the pre­vi­ous year. Most of the new jobs were in pro­duc­tion. In the an­nu­al Eco­Vadis sus­tain­ab­il­ity bench­mark En­dress+Haus­er scored 71 out of 100 points, achiev­ing Gold status – a place­ment that puts the Group among the top 5 per­cent of all rated com­pan­ies. The com­pany last year also joined the Sci­ence Based Tar­gets ini­ti­at­ive (SBTi) and is com­mit­ted to re­du­cing its green­house gas emis­sions to net zero by 2050.

Seld­ers named di­git­al­iz­a­tion and sus­tain­ab­il­ity as key top­ics. “They are drivers of our busi­ness. And they are closely linked, be­cause we can only achieve sus­tain­ab­il­ity at com­pet­it­ive costs through di­git­al­iz­a­tion.” Meas­ure­ment and ana­lyt­ic­al tech­no­logy of­fer great lever­age for mak­ing in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses more sus­tain­able. This was shown at the 2023 En­dress+Haus­er Glob­al For­um, where over 800 cus­tom­ers from around the world dis­cussed how to sus­tain­ably trans­form the pro­cess in­dustry.

Stra­tegic part­ner­ship well on track

The planned stra­tegic part­ner­ship with Ger­man sensor man­u­fac­turer SICK in the field of pro­cess auto­ma­tion should also be seen against this back­drop. “Our aim is to provide even more ef­fect­ive sup­port to our cus­tom­ers with key is­sues like cli­mate and en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion, the en­ergy trans­ition and the hy­dro­gen eco­nomy,” ex­plained the CEO. The ob­ject­ive of the part­ner­ship is to in­cor­por­ate SICK’s gas flow meas­ure­ment in­stru­ments and ana­lyz­ers in­to the En­dress+Haus­er product of­fer­ing. 

This will in­volve in­teg­rat­ing SICK’s pro­cess auto­ma­tion sales teams in­to the En­dress+Haus­er sales cen­ters and mov­ing pro­duc­tion of SICK pro­cess tech­no­logy in­to a joint ven­ture. “The ne­go­ti­ations are pro­gress­ing well,” com­men­ted Seld­ers. It is en­vis­aged that the agree­ment will be signed by mid-2024, with the part­ner­ship up and run­ning by the be­gin­ning of 2025.

Com­pany op­tim­ist­ic about 2024

The CEO ex­pressed cau­tious op­tim­ism for the cur­rent fin­an­cial year, not­ing that En­dress+Haus­er has 70 new products to even bet­ter sup­port cus­tom­ers. “In­com­ing or­ders and net sales for the first three months have been bet­ter than ex­pec­ted. However, this growth is not yet broadly based,” he said, ex­plain­ing that, after years of double-di­git rates, the com­pany was ex­pect­ing single-di­git growth for the cur­rent year. En­dress+Haus­er in­tends to cre­ate 300 new jobs world­wide. “We will do everything we can to en­sure that we per­form well in 2024 – just as we have for over 70 years,” Seld­ers said.
 

Many every­day items would be un­think­able without plastics such as poly­ethyl­ene, polypro­pyl­ene or poly­styrene, all of which are made from fossil fuels. The prob­lem is that Ger­many's mech­an­ic­al re­cyc­ling rate for plastics is still too low. Cur­rently, more plastic waste is in­cin­er­ated than mech­an­ic­ally re­cycled. Valu­able ma­ter­i­als are lost forever when waste is in­cin­er­ated. In a truly cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, waste would not be in­cin­er­ated. In­stead, it would be re­used and re­cycled either mech­an­ic­ally or chem­ic­ally - or avoided in the first place. This not only re­duces the de­mand for fossil-based re­sources, but also re­duces the en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact of car­bon emis­sions. What's more, the car­bon con­tent in the plastic would be pre­served as an im­port­ant re­source for use in the chem­ic­al in­dustry. Eight in­sti­tutes and re­search units of the Fraunhofer-Gesell­schaft are pool­ing their ex­pert­ise in the flag­ship project Waste4Future to de­vel­op new solu­tions to this chal­lenge, from raw ma­ter­i­als, through ma­ter­i­al flows and pro­cess en­gin­eer­ing, to the end of a product's life cycle. The project is co­ordin­ated by the Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Ma­ter­i­als Re­cyc­ling and Re­source Strategies (IWKS). 

“Plastics are made from hy­dro­car­bons. At the end of their ser­vice life, these are dis­posed of and are then sor­ted. Low-qual­ity plastic with too much con­tam­in­a­tion is in­cin­er­ated, while high-qual­ity plastic is sor­ted ac­cord­ing to col­or and sold as re­cycled ma­ter­i­al. But re­cyc­ling these valu­able ma­ter­i­als ac­cord­ing to type is com­plic­ated,” says Dr. Gert Homm, head of one of the sub-projects and re­search sci­ent­ist at Fraunhofer IWKS in Alzenau. “A lot of pack­aging is not even con­sidered re­cyc­lable by the sort­ing fa­cil­it­ies and ends up in the in­cin­er­a­tion plant as re­sid­ual waste. Many of today’s sensors fail to re­cog­nize black plastic, and even yogurt car­tons with alu­min­um foil lids end up with the alu­min­um by mis­take and then in re­sid­ual waste.”

Today’s waste, to­mor­row’s valu­able re­source

This is why the Waste4Future project is de­vel­op­ing a sensor suite for sort­ing plants. Among oth­er things, it can de­tect black particles in waste. An in­tel­li­gent com­bin­a­tion of dif­fer­ent sensors in the suite, in­clud­ing in­frared and tera­hertz sensors, will be able to de­term­ine both the para­met­ers for sort­ing the ma­ter­i­al as pure as pos­sible and how de­graded the sample is. The age of the sample is rel­ev­ant in as­sess­ing wheth­er and how it is suit­able for mech­an­ic­al re­cyc­ling. If something is too badly dam­aged, it can no longer be re­cycled mech­an­ic­ally, but only chem­ic­ally. Both prop­er­ties can be iden­ti­fied us­ing the sensor suite. It uses sensor tech­no­logy, some of which has been de­veloped in-house, to de­tect and link dif­fer­ent phys­ic­al prop­er­ties of the plastics (op­tic­al, thermal, etc.). The col­lec­ted data is cross-linked and eval­u­ated us­ing ma­chine learn­ing tech­niques. In a sort­ing fa­cil­ity, the sensor suite is in­stalled above the con­vey­or belt to identi­fy the waste. Com­pressed air nozzles are then used to sort out either the de­sired tar­get ma­ter­i­als or the un­wanted con­tam­in­ants. Chlor­in­ated plastics, such as polyvinyl chlor­ide (PVC), can be a prob­lem in chem­ic­al re­cyc­ling. The chlor­ine con­tent can lead to sig­ni­fic­ant cor­ro­sion of the sys­tems re­quired for chem­ic­al re­cyc­ling. In gen­er­al, the purer the plastic, the high­er the qual­ity of the re­cycled ma­ter­i­al.

When the plastic is de­tec­ted by the sensor, huge quant­it­ies of data are gen­er­ated. “Di­git­al twins help re­duce the mass of data down to es­sen­tial core data and pass this on to an eval­u­ation mod­el we are de­vel­op­ing as part of the project, so re­vamp­ing the formerly pro­cess-based re­cyc­ling chain in­to a ma­ter­i­al-based one,” says the re­search­er. Factors such as en­ergy con­sump­tion and car­bon foot­print are taken in­to ac­count in the pro­cess. The com­bin­a­tion of in­nov­at­ive sort­ing tech­no­logy, di­git­al twins, ma­chine learn­ing and eval­u­ation mod­el dy­nam­ic­ally works out for a spe­cif­ic amount of waste which re­cyc­ling route makes the most sense from a tech­nic­al, eco­lo­gic­al and fin­an­cial point of view. The eval­u­ation mod­el cal­cu­lates the im­pact on the en­vir­on­ment and gives in­form­a­tion on mat­ters such as how much en­ergy is re­quired to pro­duce one ton of new plastic. This en­ergy con­sump­tion is com­pared against the en­ergy re­quired for en­ergy re­cov­ery. The eval­u­ation mod­el ana­lyzes the vari­ous op­tions for re­cyc­ling plastics to en­able a true com­par­is­on.

Those in­volved in the project are in­vest­ig­at­ing po­ten­tial mech­an­ic­al (melt ex­tru­sion, solvent-based puri­fic­a­tion and frac­tion­a­tion) and chem­ic­al (sol­volys­is, pyro­lys­is, gas­i­fic­a­tion) re­cyc­ling pro­cesses and test­ing them for their suit­ab­il­ity for dif­fer­ent com­pos­i­tions of plastic waste. By the time the project ends in Decem­ber 2024, it will be pos­sible to com­pare com­pon­ents made from old plastics against new ma­ter­i­als.

Cir­cu­lar eco­nomy in­stead of en­ergy re­cov­ery

“A sus­tain­able so­ci­ety with cli­mate-neut­ral pro­cesses de­mands sig­ni­fic­ant ad­just­ments to value chains, which can only be achieved through in­nov­a­tion. We are fol­low­ing up on this as part of the project by work­ing out the best pos­sible route for re­cyc­ling as well as the op­tim­al sort­ing pro­cess, tak­ing fin­an­cial and eco­lo­gic­al con­sid­er­a­tions in­to ac­count, thereby con­trib­ut­ing to a sig­ni­fic­ant re­duc­tion in car­bon emis­sions com­pared to en­ergy re­cov­ery and en­abling a high de­gree of re­cyc­ling for waste con­tain­ing car­bon,” says the phys­i­cist.

Fraunhofer in­sti­tutes and re­search units in­volved:
• Fraunhofer Re­search In­sti­tu­tion for Ma­ter­i­als Re­cyc­ling and Re­source Strategies IWKS • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for High Fre­quency Phys­ics and Radar Tech­niques FHR • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Ceram­ic Tech­no­lo­gies and Sys­tems IKTS • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Struc­tur­al Dur­ab­il­ity and Sys­tem Re­li­ab­il­ity LBF • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Mi­cro­struc­ture of Ma­ter­i­als and Sys­tems IM­WS • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Optron­ics, Sys­tem Tech­no­lo­gies and Im­age Ex­ploit­a­tion IOSB • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Pro­cess En­gin­eer­ing and Pack­aging IVV • Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Nondestruct­ive Test­ing IZFP
 

Gas powered ac­tu­ation is a tech­no­logy used for a long time. From the tech­no­lo­gic­al side there is no need for a change. It still does the job well: mov­ing fast and power­ful when needed, no prob­lems with the avail­ab­il­ity of the power. But there is an emis­sion prob­lem. And as the emis­sion is meth­ane, the neg­at­ive ef­fect to the cli­mate is about 30 times that of car­bon di­ox­ide. 

With its "Fit for 55" reg­u­la­tions the EU wants to achieve green­house gas emis­sion re­duc­tion of at least 55% by 2030. To achieve this goal the Nat­ur­al Gas In­dustry has to find ways to re­duce meth­ane emis­sions. Here the biggest role is played by com­pressor sta­tions and trans­mis­sion pipelines. They present a sig­ni­fic­ant op­por­tun­ity to re­duce emis­sions. 

Håkon Es­pvik, Emer­son Product Man­ager Hy­draul­ics in Ontario, Ohio ex­plained in his ses­sion at the Emer­son Ex­change in Düsseldorf how the in­dustry still can use the be­ne­fits of the gas-powered ac­tu­at­ors, but without meth­ane emis­sions.

The tech­no­logy has a long track re­cord and thanks to that many dif­fer­ent cus­tom­isa­tions are avail­able if needed. Com­pared with the oth­er op­tions of elec­tric, pneu­mat­ic and elec­tro-hy­draul­ic ac­tu­ation it of­fers the best com­bin­a­tion of size, torque, speed and con­trol and easy avail­ab­il­ity of the power source. But the prob­lem with this thech­no­logy is the emis­sion of meth­ane, as at the end of the ac­tu­ation cycle the gas used goes out in­to the at­mo­sphere and with a big valve of up to 48'' dia­met­er in worst case this could mean emis­sions of up to 50 kh CO₂E.

The Emer­son ECAT (Emis­sions Con­trolled Ac­tu­ation Tech­no­logy) of­fers all the pos­it­ive ef­fects de­scribed and elim­in­ates the emis­sion prob­lem by re-in­ject­ing the power source back in­to the pipeline.
For the new sys­tem to work an elec­tric mo­tor with con­trol unit and thermal volume con­trol is ad­ded to load an ac­cu­mu­lat­or that stores the hy­draul­ic power for the strokes and re-in­jects the gas used back to the pipeline. This makes the ac­tu­ation in­de­pend­ent from elec­tri­city. 

For the in­stalled base the ECAT is avail­able as a ret­ro­fit op­tion to bring down emis­sions. With big­ger tanks (up to 110l) sev­er­al ac­tu­at­ors can be con­ver­ted. But in cases you have re­mote loc­a­tion where the ac­tu­ation is rarely used, you could even change to a manu­al setup re­pla­cing the elec­tric mo­tor for load­ing the ac­cu­mu­lat­or. 

In the US the ECAT is already in­stalled in about 80 in­stall­a­tions that the demon­strat­ing a good way for the gas in­dustry driv­ing emis­sions down at that point without neg­at­ive ef­fects on speed or torque in the ap­plic­a­tion.
 

The Con­extiv­ity Group’s star­tup Wear­in’ has de­veloped a solu­tion con­nect­ing the lone work­er with the con­trol cen­ter com­mis­sioned by con­crete pro­du­cer PRO BETON to en­sure the safety of its teams of ma­chine op­er­at­ors and clean­ers work­ing on pro­duc­tion sites dur­ing the day, night and week­ends.

Based on In­ter­net of Things (IoT) tech­no­logy and powered by AI, the solu­tion com­prises two plat­forms, one phys­ic­al and the oth­er di­git­al, com­mu­nic­at­ing with each oth­er in real time. A device at­tached to the work­er's vest, called the Wear­in’ Brain, em­beds three safety alert and de­tec­tion sys­tems: one to alert the con­trol cen­ter via the Wear­in’ SOS but­ton that can be ac­tiv­ated manu­ally in the event of an ac­ci­dent; an in­er­tial sensor that can auto­mat­ic­ally de­tect a fall (in case the alert can­not be raised manu­ally); and GPS to pin­point the pre­cise loc­a­tion of the work­er. Data and alerts are sent and col­lec­ted via the Cloud to the Wear­in' dash­board in­teg­rated in­to the cent­ral mon­it­or­ing sys­tem, al­low­ing the con­trol cen­ter to take ap­pro­pri­ate emer­gency and res­cue meas­ures ac­cord­ing to the alerts they have re­ceived.

Safety fea­tures for high-risk areas 

The re­li­ab­il­ity of the solu­tion, in par­tic­u­lar its ad­vanced auto­mat­ic fall de­tec­tion sys­tem, makes the dif­fer­ence in se­cur­ing lone work­ing time and meet­ing the com­fort and safety needs of our em­ploy­ees," ex­plains Éric Guil­lot, Dir­ect­or of PRO BETON based in Geneva. "As they work alone in a noisy, high-risk en­vir­on­ment, it's cru­cial for them to be able to rely on cut­ting-edge tech­no­logy that in­cor­por­ates all the ne­ces­sary safety fea­tures so that the safety con­trol cen­ter can in­ter­vene in a timely and ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner in the event of an ac­ci­dent."

As its name sug­gests, the Wear­in’ Brain at­tached to the work­er's vest is the brain of the hard­ware and soft­ware sys­tems in Wear­in's IoT solu­tion. Al­varo Gon­calves, Tech­nic­al Dir­ect­or at Wear­in’, ex­plains: "The Brain con­tains the SOS but­ton, the fall de­tec­tion sensor, the GPS sys­tem, a 10-hour bat­tery en­abling it to last an en­tire shift of PRO BETON em­ploy­ees without ad­di­tion­al char­ging, as well as the LTE mod­ule for se­cure data trans­mis­sion to the alarm cen­ter."

Avoid­ing false pos­it­ives

The fall de­tec­tion sensor de­signed by Wear­in' of­fers un­ri­valled re­li­ab­il­ity on the mar­ket, min­im­iz­ing the risk of false pos­it­ives ex­per­i­enced with oth­er, less ad­vanced com­pet­ing products. Aurélie Balsa, Em­bed­ded Soft­ware Man­ager at Wear­in', em­phas­izes this key dif­fer­en­ti­at­or: "The crit­ic­al prob­lem faced by this type of sys­tem is the fre­quency of false pos­it­ives and the im­pact they have on the work­er. The de­tec­tion provided by oth­er products less ad­vanced than ours is some­times so un­re­li­able that users, an­noyed by re­peated false alarms, end up dis­con­nect­ing the sys­tem al­to­geth­er. Wear­in's solu­tion com­prises hard­ware, firm­ware and em­bed­ded al­gorithms. Based on data from our ac­cel­er­o­met­er and gyro­scope, our al­gorithms re­duce false pos­it­ives to less than 1%, to the great sat­is­fac­tion of users, who find it all the easi­er to ad­here to this se­cur­ity sys­tem."

Jonath­an Bross­ard, CEO of Con­extiv­ity Group, is de­lighted with this IoT plat­form which per­fectly meets the par­tic­u­lar needs of the lone work­er mar­ket. "The trend we're see­ing in this sec­tor is a strong and genu­ine con­cern on the part of com­pan­ies for the health and safety of their em­ploy­ees. These com­pan­ies no longer want to lim­it them­selves to tick­ing the boxes on safety check­lists provided by reg­u­lat­ory au­thor­it­ies. They de­mand real solu­tions to the real-life is­sues spe­cif­ic to their op­er­a­tions. In this re­spect, Wear­in' provides an end-to-end con­nectiv­ity solu­tion that is not only ul­tra-re­li­able, but also mod­u­lar and scal­able, cap­able of ad­apt­ing to the spe­cif­ic se­cur­ity ty­po­lo­gies and re­quire­ments of each cli­ent or­gan­iz­a­tion."

About Wear­in’ – www.wear­in.tech
Foun­ded in 2019 by the 3rd gen­er­a­tion of the Fisc­her fam­ily of Con­extiv­ity Group, Wear­in' cre­ates wear­able IoT solu­tions that en­hance safety and ef­fi­ciency by im­prov­ing situ­ation­al aware­ness and en­abling bet­ter co­ordin­a­tion of con­nec­ted hu­mans such as lone work­ers, se­cur­ity agents, fire­fight­ers and first re­spon­ders. Its solu­tions de­signed in its R&D cen­ter in Morges, Switzer­land (Vaud) make high-risk work en­vir­on­ments safer and smarter with real-time in­sights from user-gen­er­ated field data.

Wear­in' is part of the Con­extiv­ity Group, a glob­al tech­no­logy lead­er in high-per­form­ance con­nectiv­ity solu­tions that man­age power and data flows seam­lessly from sensors and devices to the cloud and AI, en­abling the emer­gence of new trans­verse and scal­able eco­sys­tems. With nearly 700 people world­wide, one Group R&D cen­ter loc­ated in Switzer­land and sup­por­ted by re­gion­al hubs, and six man­u­fac­tur­ing sites, the group headquartered in Saint-Prex (Vaud, Switzer­land) com­prises two core busi­nesses: Fisc­her Con­nect­ors and Wear­in’.
 

Pep­perl+Fuchs an­nounces the ex­pan­sion of its Tab-Ex® tab­let series with the Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2. Based on the rugged Sam­sung Galaxy TabActive4 Pro, the tab­let fea­tures a bright­er, 480 nit 10” touch screen paired with the latest hard­ware and con­nectiv­ity op­tions. Com­bin­ing high per­form­ance with in­nov­at­ive ap­plic­a­tions such as aug­men­ted real­ity, the new device also provides users with a unique desktop-like ex­per­i­ence out­side of the field, thanks to DeX Mode. 

The Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 is ideally suited for II­oT-cap­able ap­plic­a­tions and sim­pli­fies data ex­change with SCADA / DCS sys­tems, en­ter­prise re­source plan­ning sys­tems, project man­age­ment sys­tems, and com­puter-aided sys­tem plan­ning. Even with its large 10” screen, the new tab­let is com­pact, light­weight, and ideal for a wide range of tasks such as in­vent­ory, ma­ter­i­al track­ing, main­ten­ance, and sup­ply chain and as­set man­age­ment. In ad­di­tion, doc­u­ments and tem­plates can be viewed on the tab­let's 10-inch dis­play, in­creas­ing pro­cess ef­fi­ciency.

More Com­put­ing Power for Com­plex Ap­plic­a­tions

The Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 runs on a high-per­form­ance An­droid 13 op­er­at­ing sys­tem, fea­tur­ing a power­ful Qual­comm SM7325-2-AB Octa-Core 4x 2.4 GHz + 4x 1.8 GHz pro­cessor with up to 6GB of RAM, de­pend­ing on the mod­el. This im­proved hard­ware is cap­able of sup­port­ing com­plex aug­men­ted real­ity ap­plic­a­tions. The soft­ware de­liv­ers all the un­der­ly­ing, ex­ist­ing data dir­ectly to the user in real time, while also mak­ing it share­able on the com­pany net­work. Aug­men­ted real­ity provides more trans­par­ency and helps make pro­cesses safer and faster—from plan­ning to op­er­a­tion and main­ten­ance. 

The Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 also boasts 5G and Wi-Fi 6E con­nectiv­ity for in­creased data con­nectiv­ity speeds, en­sur­ing seam­less ac­cess to all in­form­a­tion. It also fea­tures high-speed ac­cess to de­tailed mas­ter and re­pair data and oth­er op­er­a­tion­al data, as well as con­nectiv­ity that en­ables em­ploy­ees, ex­perts, teams, and project groups to col­lab­or­ate quickly and in real time. 

Tab­let as a Desktop Al­tern­at­ive

With Sam­sung DeX Mode, users can con­nect to work­sta­tions or lar­ger mon­it­ors and work on the go with one eas­ily port­able device. Every­day projects and activ­it­ies in the field can be brought to life on the big screen by con­nect­ing the Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 to a mon­it­or us­ing a mul­ti­port con­nect­or and turn­ing the tab­let in­to a desktop PC. This al­lows videos, graph­ics, doc­u­ments and clas­sic Of­fice ap­plic­a­tions to be viewed more closely on a lar­ger screen. From the of­fice to the shop floor, tasks such as re­triev­ing equip­ment data, check­ing in­vent­ory, re­source plan­ning, and schem­at­ics can be done seam­lessly any­where. Ad­di­tion­ally, costs can be re­duced sig­ni­fic­antly, since there is no more need for of­fice com­puters, ef­fect­ively elim­in­at­ing their man­age­ment and sup­port. 

Wheth­er in the oil and gas in­dustry, re­finer­ies, chem­ic­al plants, the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al in­dustry, or along the hy­dro­gen value chain — there are vir­tu­ally no lim­its on the uses for in­dus­tri­al tab­lets. The Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 is dust and wa­ter res­ist­ant due to de­gree of pro­tec­tion (IP68) and meets the MIL-STD-810H stand­ard, which means it is shock and vi­bra­tion res­ist­ant. In ad­di­tion, the tab­let car­ries NEC/CEC Class I, Div. 2 cer­ti­fic­a­tions and FCC/IC com­pli­ance test ap­provals. It is also tested and com­pat­ible with the net­works of man­i­fold mo­bile ser­vice pro­viders.

The Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 is part of the Pep­perl+Fuchs in­ter­linked, haz­ard­ous area mo­bile work­er concept, which in­cludes smart­phones, tab­lets, peri­pher­als, and soft­ware ap­plic­a­tions. De­signed in co­oper­a­tion with Sam­sung, the Tab-Ex 04 Pro DZ2 / D2 of­fers a long product life cycle, state-of-the-art tech­no­logy, re­li­ab­il­ity (TCO), and se­cur­ity thanks to Sam­sung Knox.
 

Turck has com­pletely up­dated its IMX12-CCM con­trol cab­in­et guard. The devices are now com­mis­sioned via haptic but­tons in­stead of light sensors, mak­ing them even more in­tu­it­ive. The tem­per­at­ure range has also been im­proved: a range of +25...70 de­grees en­ables the devices to be used in con­trol cab­in­ets for re­mote I/O, which are of­ten in­stalled in areas that can be­come hot due to neigh­bour­ing sys­tems or sun­light. Turck has also im­proved com­pat­ib­il­ity with isol­at­ing trans­ducers that sup­ply power to the devices in haz­ard­ous areas. The IMX12-CCM devices are com­pat­ible with isol­at­ing trans­ducers from oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers as well as from Turck.

Dif­fer­ent soft­ware op­tions

In ad­di­tion to the com­pletely re­designed IMX12-CCM, Turck of­fers oth­er con­trol cab­in­et pro­tec­tion devices for dif­fer­ent scen­ari­os and cus­tom­er seg­ments. Users who want to run their own con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing soft­ware on a com­pact device can choose between the IMX-CCM40 or the IMX-CCM50 with Linux plat­form. For cus­tom­ers look­ing for a con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing plat­form that can be para­met­erised without any pro­gram­ming know­ledge, Turck of­fers the IMX-CCM60 with the pre-in­stalled SI­IN­EOS soft­ware plat­form. SI­IN­EOS of­fers a wide range of ready-to-use ap­plic­a­tions to in­teg­rate the in­teg­rated in­ter­faces and sensors as well as all stand­ard net­work and in­dus­tri­al pro­to­cols.
 

Chain and roller con­vey­ors, belt and pal­let con­vey­ors, con­tain­er and over­head con­vey­ors: In ware­house lo­gist­ics, they all re­quire re­li­able drives with suf­fi­cient power. This is guar­an­teed by the Lo­giD­rive Ba­sic and Lo­giD­rive Ad­vanced solu­tions from drive spe­cial­ist NORD. Both are char­ac­ter­ised by max­im­um user-friend­li­ness, easy wir­ing, low weight and com­pact in­stall­a­tion space. What sets them apart is the goal for which they have been op­tim­ised.

Fo­cus on costs or en­ergy ef­fi­ciency

The Ba­sic solu­tion com­prises an IE3 asyn­chron­ous mo­tor, de­cent­ral­ised NOR­DAC ON fre­quency in­vert­er and a gear unit from the NORD port­fo­lio. The per­fectly matched com­pon­ents meet all the re­quire­ments for ware­house ap­plic­a­tions and have a large ad­just­ment range. This drive solu­tion does not of­fer max­im­um ef­fi­ciency but fea­tures low in­vest­ment costs.

The Lo­giD­rive Ad­vanced solu­tion of­fers highly ef­fi­cient IE5+ syn­chron­ous mo­tor with an de­cent­ral­ised NOR­DAC ON+ fre­quency in­vert­er, spe­cially de­signed for com­bin­a­tion with the IE5+ mo­tor and a NORD gear unit. This drive solu­tion en­sures max­im­um en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and thus achieves high sav­ings in CO₂ emis­sions. It achieves its very high ef­fi­ciency via large speed and load ranges, and al­lows for a vari­ant re­duc­tion. This is par­tic­u­larly at­tract­ive for large sys­tems with nu­mer­ous drives: Few­er drive vari­ants in a sys­tem res­ult in stream­lined lo­gist­ics, ware­house and ser­vice pro­cesses and thus in re­duced ad­min­is­trat­ive costs.

Meet­ing dif­fer­ent re­quire­ments of users

The choice de­pends on the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments of the ap­plic­a­tion. Either way, the user gets a per­fectly in­dustry-op­tim­ised solu­tion, in­clud­ing a fre­quency con­vert­er with in­teg­rated multi-pro­tocol Eth­er­net in­ter­face. In ad­di­tion, both solu­tions are equipped with all in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fic­a­tions and can there­fore be used world­wide, which is im­port­ant for glob­al com­pan­ies.

The production of lithium-ion batteries is complex. To ensure a high-performance, high-quality product, contamination of the slurry by metallic abrasion and the ingress of air and moisture must be avoided. At the same time, maximum feeding accuracy under challenging pressure conditions and a reliable containment concept are required. The new CS+ loss-in-weight feeder system from Schenck Process perfectly meets these different requirements.

Practical design for individual requirements

CS+ can be customized to meet individual customer requirements. The modular design makes it possible to cover a large feeding range with just one feeder type: CS+ is suitable for small quantities from 30 litres per hour as well as for high feeding capacities of up to 3,000 litres per hour. Schenck Process has placed particular emphasis on avoiding product contamination in the new development. To prevent metal-to-metal contact, components can be optionally coated. Smooth surfaces and limited relative speeds of the agitator and screw minimize metal abrasion. The patented design of the CS+ combines this with a quick-acting flap that prevents material from trickling out during the batch process. 

The CS+ loss-in-weight feeder system also offers the user permanently high accuracy for consistently high product quality. Intelligent pressure management prevents the ingress of ambient air and moisture. This prevents pressure fluctuations from having a negative impact on the dosing accuracy. At the same time, the system impresses with its simple and practical design, which also allows several dosing units to be installed in the smallest of spaces. Last but not least, CS+ fits seamlessly into system concepts that rely on a consistent containment concept to limit dust emissions. The system complies with OEB class 4 and therefore minimizes the risk for users during production. 
 

Horizontal mixers are impressive due to their excellent mixing efficiency and low height requirements. In certain applications, there is an interest in emptying the mixers completely after a mixing process. This may be the case when changing recipes. Bomb doors are a common solution to facilitate discharge, but there could be a risk of leakage and they require frequent cleaning and maintenance. In addition, the instantaneous discharge flow created by bomb doors can lead to undesirable demixing effects. Bomb doors make large discharge hoppers under the mixers necessary. They are critical for cleaning and inspection.

Retrofitting option

Gericke's AirCIP system solves these problems by using a minimal amount of compressed air to create a pulsating effect that pushes the material out of the mixer through the discharge valves. The system also cleans the paddles and the inner walls of the mixer, ensuring no residues are left behind. The AirCIP system can be tailored to different products and applications, and it does not compromise the homogeneity or quality of the mix. There are multiple benefits of the AirCIP system: it reduces product loss, prevents cross-contamination, saves time and energy, and eliminates the need for manual cleaning between product changes. The system is compatible with Gericke's range of horizontal shaft mixers, such as the GMS Multiflux® and the GBM Gericke Batch Mixer, and it can also be retrofitted to existing mixers.
 

Teknic's new ClearPath™ brush­less servo mo­tor mod­els are rated for wash­down ap­plic­a­tions per IP66K / IP67 pro­tec­tion. These mo­tors can with­stand high-pres­sure sprays (IP66K) and short peri­ods of sub­mer­sion up to 1 meter (IP67). The rugged, re­li­able ser­vos can power auto­ma­tion equip­ment in high-volume OEM mar­kets, in­clud­ing med­ic­al, AOI, and CNC equip­ment. Over­sized and per­man­ently lub­ric­ated brand-name bear­ings, Class H high-tem­per­at­ure wind­ing (180ºC), a fault-tol­er­ant en­coder design and fully sintered rare-earth mag­nets as­sure high qual­ity and last­ing re­li­ab­il­ity. 

Mul­tiple con­trol op­tions can be pro­grammed for step and dir­ec­tion and di­git­al I/O triggered mo­tion, Teknic of­fers a rich C++ or C# lib­rary. Mod­bus (with Clear­Core) Eth­er­Net/IP (with ClearLink) and Eth­er­CAT (avail­able early 2024) and more com­mu­nic­a­tion in­ter­faces are avail­able. The state-of-the-art drive per­form­ance of­fers ad­apt­ive com­pens­a­tion for high in­er­tial loads, ve­lo­city ac­cur­acy of 0.001%, pat­en­ted vi­bra­tion damp­ing al­gorithms and an ef­fect­ive auto-tune.
 

Bod­ine Elec­tric in­tro­duces six new type 56R1-50JW/H stain­less steel hol­low shaft gear­mo­tors. These new geared mo­tors com­bine a stain­less-steel AC in­vert­er-duty, 230/460 VAC mo­tor with a stain­less-steel hol­low shaft gear­head. When used with an AC in­vert­er (VFD) con­trol, these gear­mo­tors de­liv­er vari­able speed and main­ten­ance free op­er­a­tion over a wide speed range. Ideal for equip­ment that is sub­ject to in­tens­ive clean­ing, these new gear­mo­tors also meet EU hy­gien­ic stand­ards for food ma­chinery. They are suit­able for use in the food and bever­age in­dustry, phar­ma­ceut­ic­al in­dustry, and in per­man­ently wet en­vir­on­ments. 

Built for Tough En­vir­on­ments

De­signed to with­stand con­stant ex­pos­ure to high-pres­sure wash­downs, Bod­ine’s new 56R1-50JW/H gear­mo­tors fea­ture high-grade, cor­ro­sion res­ist­ant stain­less-steel hous­ings and are fully wa­ter­tight. The gear­mo­tor’s smooth sur­face al­lows thor­ough and ef­fi­cient clean­ing, re­du­cing the pos­sib­il­ity of bac­teria growth. The totally en­closed, non-vent­il­ated (TENV) mo­tor pre­vents air­borne re-con­tam­in­a­tion caused by air move­ment from a cool­ing fan. The large, wa­ter-tight junc­tion box is in the 12 o’clock po­s­i­tion for easy ac­cess. The gear­mo­tors meet IP-69K stand­ards. Driv­en by a main­ten­ance-free ½ HP AC in­vert­er-duty 3 phase mo­tor (230/460VAC), the gear­mo­tors achieve up to 72 Nm torque and speeds from 29 to 176 rpm. The sealed gear­mo­tor is avail­able with gear ra­tios from 10:1 to 60:1, and it util­izes food-grade lub­ric­ant.

Com­pact Design

The new type 50JW/H hol­low shaft gear­mo­tors op­tim­ize mount­ing space, sim­pli­fy in­stall­a­tion, and re­duce the num­ber of re­quired parts. They can be con­nec­ted dir­ectly to the driv­en load elim­in­at­ing ex­pens­ive shaft coup­lings and mount­ing hard­ware that can be bulky and present align­ment is­sues. These hol­low shaft gear­mo­tors of­fer left- or right-hand face mounts for max­im­um ap­plic­a­tion flex­ib­il­ity. Ac­cessor­ies in­clud­ing a stain­less-steel torque arm kit, a stain­less-steel mount­ing flange kit, and single-ex­ten­sion and double-ex­ten­sion, 1-inch dia­met­er stain­less steel shaft kits are offered by Bod­ine. Also a stain­less-steel shaft cov­er kit for the non-ex­ten­sion shaft side of the gear­head is avail­able.
 

The stain­less steel IPCs from the pro-V-pad STEEL IP69k series for sys­tem and pro­cess con­trol in harsh and hy­giene-sens­it­ive areas of food pro­duc­tion will be presen­ted at Anuga­FoodTec 2024 by their man­u­fac­turer pro­Lo­gistik. The spe­cial fea­tures in­clude high im­per­meab­il­ity against the in­gress of particles and mois­ture - es­pe­cially dur­ing steam jet clean­ing. The sta­tion­ary and mo­bile IPCs are spe­cified for an op­er­at­ing tem­per­at­ure range of -30 °C to +50 °C - a heat­ing mod­ule is op­tion­ally avail­able. The food-safe ma­ter­i­als are char­ac­ter­ised by high me­dia res­ist­ance. The hous­ing with its scratch-res­ist­ant and shat­ter-proof dis­play made of three mil­li­metre thick safety glass (15.6" or 21.5") ful­fils all rel­ev­ant design hy­giene re­quire­ments. The IPCs in the pro-V-pad STEEL IP69K series are de­signed for Win­dows, An­droid 10 and Linux op­er­at­ing sys­tems and can be cus­tom­ised and func­tion­ally ex­pan­ded in terms of design, pro­cessor tech­no­logy, screen size, user in­ter­face, con­nectiv­ity and much more.

The stain­less steel IPCs from pro­Lo­gistik are used for re­cord­ing op­er­at­ing and ma­chine data, for data and pro­cess visu­al­isa­tion or for qual­ity as­sur­ance in the pro­duc­tion, pro­cessing and pack­aging of food­stuffs. They can be op­er­ated without re­stric­tion in work gloves and spe­cial freez­er gloves - and there­fore of­fer max­im­um in­put safety and user er­go­nom­ics.

Con­sist­ently ro­bust and hy­gien­ic­ally de­signed

The stain­less steel IPCs in the pro-V-pad STEEL IP69K series are con­sist­ently de­signed to meet the en­vir­on­ment­al re­quire­ments in damp and wet areas, such as those com­monly found in cut­ting plants and dair­ies, filler and cap­per lines in bever­age bot­tling plants and the pro­cessing and pack­aging of food and an­im­al feed. The stain­less-steel hous­ing with IP69K pro­tec­tion re­li­ably and per­man­ently pro­tects the elec­tron­ics in­side against the in­gress of dirt, dust, li­quids, mois­ture mist and high-pres­sure va­pour. The V4A hous­ing ma­ter­i­al of­fers max­im­um res­ist­ance to ox­id­at­ive me­dia and ag­gress­ive sub­stances such as those con­tained in many of the clean­ing agents and dis­in­fect­ants com­monly used in in­dustry. pro­Lo­gistik has en­sured that the design is con­sist­ently hy­gien­ic in or­der to pre­vent dirt pock­ets, spore formers and germs: The hous­ing of the pro-V-pad STEEL IP69K is free of trans­itions, gaps, re­cesses, un­der­cuts or dead spaces in which bac­teria or mi­croor­gan­isms could nest. The hous­ing sur­faces with their smooth, roun­ded edges are in­clined to en­sure com­plete, residue-free drain­age of product residues or rins­ing me­dia. In ad­di­tion, the smooth sur­face of the V4A ma­ter­i­al makes it more dif­fi­cult for mi­croor­gan­isms to ad­here and mul­tiply and pro­motes their nat­ur­al die-off rate. This in­creases mi­cro­bi­o­lo­gic­al safety and of­fers ad­di­tion­al pro­tec­tion against the risk of con­tam­in­a­tion.
 

In many meas­ure­ment ap­plic­a­tions, pH sensors are ex­posed to con­tam­in­a­tion, cor­ro­sion and ab­ra­sion. To en­sure func­tion­al­ity, the sensors must be cleaned reg­u­larly. However, in many ap­plic­a­tions, a fully auto­mated sensor main­ten­ance sys­tem has not yet been eco­nom­ic­al.

Mod­u­lar auto­mat­ic sensor clean­ing

With the Uni­clean 700 series, Knick in­tro­duces a mod­u­lar con­trol sys­tem that can be in­stalled very quickly and cost-ef­fect­ively as a flex­ible entry-level solu­tion for auto­mated sensor clean­ing. With its in­nov­at­ive concept and fo­cused func­tion­al­ity, the Uni­clean 700 com­ple­ments the port­fo­lio of Uni­clean 900 and Unic­al 9000 con­trol­lers, which are used in Knick's es­tab­lished cCare sys­tem for fully auto­mated clean­ing and cal­ib­ra­tion.

Flex­ible con­fig­ur­a­tion 

The mod­u­lar design of the in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents gives the cus­tom­er a high de­gree of flex­ib­il­ity. However, the com­pact design makes in­stall­a­tion very easy. With the Uni­clean 700 con­trol sys­tems, Knick of­fers the user a flex­ible and ex­pand­able solu­tion that is suit­able for use with both stat­ic and re­tract­able valves. The valves can be op­er­ated pneu­mat­ic­ally or, in the near fu­ture, hy­draul­ic­ally.

The cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion is used in waste wa­ter treat­ment plants and in the met­al pro­cessing in­dustry. This is where heavy soil­ing and high sensor wear are en­countered. The Uni­clean 700 series also ex­cels in the food in­dustry. In sug­ar factor­ies, for ex­ample, sensors of­ten be­come en­crus­ted.

Entry-level solu­tion for pH sensors

With the new series, Knick of­fers an entry-level sys­tem for auto­mat­ic clean­ing of pH sensors, which is valu­able in many in­dus­tries. Un­like the Uni­clean 900, the Uni­clean 700 mod­els do not re­quire the spe­cial con­trol pro­gramme in the Pro­tos trans­mit­ter. The clean­ing pro­cess can be triggered by a simple switch­ing sig­nal, such as the re­lay con­tact of a Stra­tos Multi and Pro­tos II, or by a simple push-but­ton. The Uni­clean 700 series also works with third party trans­mit­ters or fit­tings.

The mod­u­lar design al­lows for easy con­ver­sions when needed. This means that clean­ing con­trol sys­tems can be quickly ad­ap­ted to pro­cess changes.

Used com­pon­ents can be re­used and valves, for ex­ample, can be re­placed quickly and eas­ily. All ne­ces­sary parts are avail­able sep­ar­ately so that the fi­nal con­fig­ur­a­tion of the Uni­clean 710 and 720 can be car­ried out on site. The Uni­clean 730 is sup­plied fully as­sembled and ready to use.
 

Dif­fer­ent ap­plic­a­tions util­ize dif­fer­ent dis­in­fect­ants. Ozone is a com­mon dis­in­fect­ant in wa­ter treat­ment ap­plic­a­tions since it is highly re­act­ive. Wa­ter dis­tri­bu­tion net­works rely on chlor­ine or chlor­ine di­ox­ide be­cause they have a de­pos­it ef­fect that en­sures the wa­ter safely reaches the con­sumer. In terms of coolant ap­plic­a­tions, the wa­ter is fre­quently dis­in­fec­ted with chlor­ine di­ox­ide or free brom­ine be­cause they break down biofilms dir­ectly and are ef­fect­ive across a wide pH range. Free brom­ine is em­ployed as a dis­in­fect­ant in sea­wa­ter ap­plic­a­tions since the chlor­in­a­tion in this me­di­um pro­duces free brom­ine. Per­acet­ic acid is com­monly used in the food in­dustry as it acts as a broad-spec­trum dis­in­fect­ant. Dis­in­fec­tion with free chlor­ine or chlor­ine di­ox­ide is also used in the treat­ment of product wa­ter for the man­u­fac­ture of soft drink bever­ages.

En­sur­ing con­sist­ent taste in the bever­age in­dustry 

Raw wa­ter treat­ment plays a key role in terms of the safety and taste of the end product in bever­age man­u­fac­tur­ing. Al­though the raw wa­ter can vary de­pend­ing on the loc­a­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ers have strict re­quire­ments re­gard­ing its com­pos­i­tion be­cause the bever­age must taste the same re­gard­less of the pro­duc­tion site. Raw wa­ter treat­ment oc­curs in sev­er­al steps dur­ing soft drink man­u­fac­tur­ing. The first step is to meas­ure the tur­bid­ity of the wa­ter and feed it to a re­verse os­mos­is sys­tem to re­duce the con­cen­tra­tion of dis­solved sub­stances – in oth­er words de­sal­in­at­ing the wa­ter. This res­ults in taste-neut­ral treat­ment of the wa­ter, thus en­sur­ing the bever­age has a con­sist­ent taste. 

In re­verse os­mos­is, the nat­ur­al os­mos­is pro­cess is re­versed through a semi-per­meable mem­brane un­der high pres­sure. The wa­ter pen­et­rates the mem­brane while oth­er sub­stances are re­tained. If the raw wa­ter is dis­in­fec­ted pri­or to re­verse os­mos­is, the chlor­ine must be com­pletely re­moved, such as through act­ive char­coal fil­tra­tion, in or­der to pro­tect the mem­brane. 

The role of chlor­ine meas­ure­ment for safe and ef­fi­cient soft drink pro­duc­tion 

In many cases dis­in­fec­tion of the raw wa­ter oc­curs down­stream from the re­verse os­mos­is pro­cess. The dis­in­fec­tion pro­cess util­izes 0.3 mg/l of free chlor­ine, which cor­res­ponds to the al­low­able amount as out­lined in the Ger­man drink­ing wa­ter reg­u­la­tions. The raw wa­ter is then freed of all re­sid­ual chlor­ine via fil­tra­tion since it must be com­pletely free of chlor­ine be­fore adding the bever­age syr­up.
However, this fil­tra­tion is cir­cum­ven­ted via a by­pass once a week in or­der to clean the pip­ing with chlor­ine at low tem­per­at­ures us­ing a so-called cold clean­ing in place (cold CIP) pro­cess. 

In or­der to mon­it­or the re­mov­al of the chlor­ine and the cold CIP pro­cess, am­pero­met­ric sensors are in­stalled at two points to meas­ure the amount of free chlor­ine: 
•    after fil­tra­tion to de­term­ine if the wa­ter is chlor­ine-free 
•    in the pip­ing sys­tem where the chlor­ine con­tent must be main­tained at 0.3 mg/l. 

The spe­cial chal­lenge here is the ab­sence of chlor­ine over a longer peri­od of time after fil­tra­tion. With many am­pero­met­ric sensors, this ab­sence leads to a delayed re­sponse be­ha­vi­or, with the sensor es­sen­tially fall­ing asleep. This can lead to product loss since the bever­age syr­up is ad­ded while un­detec­ted chlor­ine is present in the raw wa­ter after fil­tra­tion. The Memo­sens CCS51E sensor from En­dress+Haus­er for meas­ur­ing free chlor­ine ex­hib­its no delayed re­sponse even after a longer peri­od of in­activ­ity, thus en­sur­ing that any chlor­ine peaks do not go un­detec­ted. The sensor fur­ther­more “no­tices” chlor­in­ated wa­ter once a week when the fil­tra­tion is by­passed. This tests the func­tion­al­ity of the sensor and en­sures elec­tro­chem­ic­al ac­tiv­a­tion. Com­pared to wet chem­ic­al ana­lyz­ers that use the DPD meth­od, which can provide a meas­ure­ment value only every three minutes, in­line meas­ure­ments with am­pero­met­ric sensors of­fer con­tinu­ous meas­ure­ments in which no peaks are over­looked. 

Con­tinu­ous meas­ure­ments are fur­ther­more be­ne­fi­cial for con­trolling the chlor­ine dosage. The fast meas­ure­ment value means a more pre­cise dosage: as little as pos­sible, but enough for a re­li­able dis­in­fec­tion pro­cess. Achiev­ing this de­gree of pre­ci­sion re­quires cre­at­ing an ad­equate flow to the sensor mem­brane of 15 cm/s. If the sensor is cal­ib­rated once a year, the DPD cal­ib­ra­tion should be car­ried out by draw­ing the sample near the sensor, keep­ing the cu­vette clean, ob­serving the ex­pir­a­tion date of the DPD re­agents and avoid­ing air bubbles in the sample. 

The am­pero­met­ric sensors re­quire no re­agents, mak­ing them low main­ten­ance. The new gen­er­a­tion of Memo­sens sensors also stores more data re­gard­ing cal­ib­ra­tion and op­er­at­ing hours – such as the elec­tro­lyte counter – and the load, mak­ing it pos­sible to de­vel­op a more ef­fi­cient main­ten­ance strategy tailored to the ap­plic­a­tion.

Last but not least, the new gen­er­a­tion of sensors is more ef­fi­cient when it comes to com­mis­sion­ing. Once in­stalled, only a short po­lar­iz­a­tion cycle is re­quired be­fore they be­gin to dis­play stable meas­ure­ment val­ues, thus en­sur­ing that the plant is fully func­tion­al again with­in a short peri­od of time. 

With some bever­age man­u­fac­tur­ers, raw wa­ter treat­ment has de­veloped to the point that they have to mon­it­or not only the free chlor­ine levels but all dis­in­fect­ant residues. Total chlor­ine sensors such as the Memo­sens CCS53E are suit­able for these types of meas­ure­ments. This sensor re­li­ably and quickly mon­it­ors free (HC1, OC1) and com­bined (chloramines) chlor­ine, thus lead­ing to an even safer product. 

Sum­mary

By re­ly­ing on suit­able meas­ure­ment and dosage tech­no­lo­gies that fea­ture fast re­sponse be­ha­vi­or, bever­age man­u­fac­tur­ers can pre­cisely treat their raw wa­ter to en­sure con­sist­ent bever­age qual­ity. Re­li­able and con­tinu­ous trans­mis­sion of the meas­ure­ment data en­sures pre­cise dos­ing of the dis­in­fect­ant, res­ult­ing in in­creased pro­cess ef­fi­ciency. The Memo­sens CCS51E and CCS53E sensors from En­dress+Haus­er meet all of these re­quire­ments and also of­fer con­nectiv­ity to ex­ten­ded II­oT ser­vices through Memo­sens 2.0 tech­no­logy for fu­ture-proof op­er­a­tion of the plant. 

Au­thor: Jo­hannes Kienle, Product Man­ager, En­dress+Haus­er  
 

Emer­son has in­tro­duced its next-gen­er­a­tion Rose­mount™ 3490 con­trol­ler for level and flow meas­ure­ment ap­plic­a­tions, help­ing to re­duce com­plex­ity, op­tim­ise pro­cesses and im­prove sus­tain­ab­il­ity. De­signed for max­im­um ease of use, the con­trol­ler of­fers a full range of func­tion­al­ity for 4-20 mA or HART® com­pat­ible trans­mit­ters and is an ideal solu­tion for ap­plic­a­tions in the wa­ter, wastewa­ter and pro­cess in­dus­tries.

In­tu­it­ive op­er­a­tion 

The Rose­mount 3490 is the first con­trol­ler to of­fer simple-to-pro­gramme con­fig­ur­a­tion wiz­ards to help users set up the con­trol­ler, mak­ing this pro­cess sig­ni­fic­antly less com­plex and time-con­sum­ing. To fur­ther en­hance ease of use, the con­trol­ler fea­tures a mod­ern, in­tu­it­ive graph­ic­al user in­ter­face, an easy-to-nav­ig­ate menu struc­ture and a back­lit 4.3" col­our LCD dis­play, mak­ing it easy to op­er­ate and view device status.
 
By com­bin­ing the Rose­mount 3490 con­trol­ler with Emer­son's Rose­mount 1208C non-con­tact radar level and flow trans­mit­ter, or­gan­isa­tions can achieve ac­cur­ate and re­li­able meas­ure­ments with simple con­fig­ur­a­tion via HART. This helps them op­tim­ise op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency in a wide range of wa­ter and wastewa­ter ap­plic­a­tions, in­clud­ing auto­mat­ic con­trol of up to six pumps, fil­tra­tion op­er­a­tions, sludge hand­ling, and flow in open chan­nels, flumes and weirs. The rugged design of the con­trol­ler and trans­mit­ter makes them ideal for use in the harsh en­vir­on­ments typ­ic­ally found in these ap­plic­a­tions.

Easy data col­lec­tion and shar­ing

The ac­cur­acy of level and flow meas­ure­ments helps to pre­vent over­filling and wa­ter wastage, sup­port­ing in­creased sus­tain­ab­il­ity. To en­sure com­pli­ance with in­dustry guidelines and reg­u­la­tions, the Rose­mount 3490 sim­pli­fies re­port­ing and doc­u­ment­a­tion. It al­lows a vari­ety of flow meas­ure­ments to be summed, dif­fer­en­tials to be cal­cu­lated, and data to be eas­ily logged and shared with reg­u­lat­ory agen­cies via a web in­ter­face with Eth­er­net con­nectiv­ity.
 

The ifm O2I mul­ticode read­er is cap­able of the eval­u­ation of dif­fer­ent 1D and 2D codes and texts in a single im­age. Ap­plic­a­tions for this new vis­ion sensor are primar­ily to be found in lo­gist­ics. The O2I can be used to check the qual­ity of codes and text in­form­a­tion or to en­sure trace­ab­il­ity through-out the en­tire pro­cess.  The O2I is equipped with in­teg­rated RGBW il­lu­min­a­tion or use in dark or shaded en­vir­on­ments, en­abling re­li­able de­tec­tion of dif­fi­cult col­our com­bin­a­tions of code, text and back­ground.

Com­mu­nic­a­tion via IO-Link

The read­er uses the COM3 stand­ard with a speed of 230.4 kbaud for data trans­mis­sion via IO-Link. In or­der to im­prove the trans­fer­ab­il­ity of data with a size of more than 32 bytes, the data is auto­mat­ic­ally di­vided in­to sev­er­al blocks and thus trans­ferred to the con­trol­ler as quickly as pos­sible. In ad­di­tion to trans­mis­sion, IO-Link also sim­pli­fies the hand­ling of the O2I multi-code read­er. Thanks to a teach but­ton, users can eas­ily set up the sensor. This in­volves align­ing the sensor to the code. The sensor then auto­mat­ic­ally per­forms fo­cus­ing, code type de­tec­tion and ex­pos­ure ad­just­ment. The multi-code read­er is then ready for use with­in seconds. Ba­sic con­fig­ur­a­tion is done via a ded­ic­ated smart­phone app, which can also be used to set trig­gers or the IP ad­dress. The smart­phone gen­er­ates a Data Mat­rix code. This is held in the O2I's field of view to con­fig­ure the sensor.

Soft­ware As­sist­ant

Even more ex­tens­ive con­fig­ur­a­tion is pos­sible with the ifm Vis­ion As­sist­ant soft­ware. Us­ing vari­ous lo­gic func­tions, the user can pro­gram the se­quence con­trol with­in the sensor. This is com­ple­men­ted by in­tel­li­gent de­tec­tion: The O2I multi-code read­er auto­mat­ic­ally re­cog­nises sev­er­al dif­fer-ent codes in an im­age. The codes can then be eas­ily as­signed via the Vis­ion As­sist­ant. The user al­ways has an op­tim­um over­view thanks to a live im­age and com­pre­hens­ive visu­al­isa­tion of the set­tings.
 

Moore In­dus­tries an­nounces the 330R2 1/8 DIN pro­cess and tem­per­at­ure pan­el meter to re­place the dis­con­tin­ued 330R pro­cess mon­it­or. The 330R2 cov­ers a wide range of pro­cess and tem­per­at­ure ap­plic­a­tions with its uni­ver­sal in­put and dual pro­cess re­lays. It fea­tures a UV-res­ist­ant, sun­light-read­able 4-di­git dis­play. With an op­er­at­ing tem­per­at­ure range of -40 to 65°C, the 330R2 is ideal for harsh out­door en­vir­on­ments. The 330R2 is housed in a 1/8 DIN case and ac­cepts a wide range of ana­logue in­puts in­clud­ing pro­cess voltage (0-5V, 1-5V, 0-10V, ±10V) and cur­rent (0-20mA, 4-20mA, ±20mA) in­puts, 100 Ohm RTDs and the four most com­mon ther­mo­couples. 

Free soft­ware for pro­gram­ming and mon­it­or­ing

High­lights of the 330R2 in­clude the abil­ity to provide 24VDC to power the trans­mit­ter's 4-20mA sig­nal with the high-level in­put powered units, sim­pli­fy­ing wir­ing and re­du­cing over­all in­stall­a­tion costs. In ad­di­tion, an isol­ated 4-20mA out­put op­tion is avail­able for re­trans­mis­sion of pro­cess and tem­per­at­ure in­puts. The 330R2 is a ver­sat­ile and dur­able pan­el meter in a shal­low 1/8 DIN hous­ing with a NEMA 4X & IP65 front pan­el with ad­justable dis­play in­tens­ity, mak­ing the 330R2 par­tic­u­larly ef­fect­ive for out­door ap­plic­a­tions. With 2 SP­DT Form C re­lays, the 330R2 provides alarm and con­trol flex­ib­il­ity for crit­ic­al tem­per­at­ure and pro­cess loops, in­clud­ing pump con­trol ap­plic­a­tions. UL & Canada-UL Lis­ted, the 330R2 meets the safety re­quire­ments of UL 508 In­dus­tri­al Con­trol Equip­ment. The meter can be quickly and eas­ily pro­grammed from a PC or in the field. Pro­gram­ming in the field is car­ried out us­ing the four push but­tons on the front pan­el, or the unit can be pro­grammed us­ing the free pro­gram­ming and mon­it­or­ing soft­ware. This pro­gram­ming soft­ware al­lows you to save con­fig­ur­a­tion set­tings to a file. This makes it easy to pro­gram mul­tiple meters.
 

Vais­ala an­nounced the launch of the Air Qual­ity Trans­mit­ter 560 (AQT560) a com­pact air qual­ity sensor with a wide de­tec­tion range — PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 — and a unique cal­ib­ra­tion sys­tem and al­gorithms that en­able un­matched de­tec­tion ac­cur­acy and ef­fi­ciency.

The AQT560 stands out as the most de­pend­able com­pact air qual­ity sensor for meas­ur­ing particle mat­ter (PM). Its pre­ci­sion in de­tect­ing aer­o­sol num­ber con­cen­tra­tion of particles with­in the size range of 0.3 to 10 mi­crons is un­par­alleled. As a res­ult, the sensor ex­cels in ac­cur­ately provid­ing PM1 con­cen­tra­tions for sources primar­ily in­flu­enced by com­bus­tion (such as traffic, res­id­en­tial wood burn­ing, and wild­fires), PM2.5 con­cen­tra­tions dom­in­ated by long-range trans­port, and PM10 con­cen­tra­tions driv­en by ab­ras­ive pro­cesses (such as road dust, sand­storms, con­struc­tion, and min­ing).

De­signed for highest de­pend­ab­il­ity

The AQT560’s particle meas­ure­ment per­form­ance was tested against ref­er­ence-grade sensors by the Nor­we­gi­an In­sti­tute for Air Re­search (NILU). The new sensor achieved su­per­i­or res­ults dur­ing the in­de­pend­ent re­search or­gan­iz­a­tion’s re­view, with per­form­ance rated as “very good,” es­pe­cially re­gard­ing PM10 de­tec­tion.

Lever­aging Vais­ala’s in­tel­li­gent hu­mid­ity con­trol sys­tem and al­gorithms, the sensor de­tects the most im­port­ant pol­lut­ant gases in am­bi­ent air, such as NO, NO₂, CO, and O₃. The sensor is de­signed for highest de­pend­ab­il­ity with cut­ting-edge op­tic­al com­pon­ents and a rotary vane pump to provide op­tim­al flow man­age­ment and con­trol, de­liv­er­ing trust­worthy in­tel­li­gence. It can be used stan­dalone or with ex­ist­ing net­works.
 

Bürkert is provid­ing cus­tom­ers with more dia­gnost­ic data from its Type 8222 con­duct­iv­ity sensors and Type 8202 pH sensors by em­bed­ding the IO-Link and Bürkert büS in­dus­tri­al pro­to­cols in­to its ELE­MENT Neut­rino range of products. The di­git­isa­tion of these products al­lows main­ten­ance and op­er­a­tions to be stream­lined through re­mote mon­it­or­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies, sup­port­ing pro­cess up­time in wa­ter qual­ity or chem­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions.

Tra­di­tion­ally, in-line probes in pipelines provide sig­nals to con­trol­lers, which are then trans­mit­ted to PLCs. However, the setup of this sys­tem re­quires a lot of in­stall­a­tion work, such as pan­el wir­ing - an ex­pens­ive task. An­oth­er op­tion is com­pact trans­mit­ters that can provide mul­tiple out­puts: usu­ally a switch­ing out­put and a mil­li­amp out­put that can be used for the primary value such as pH or tem­per­at­ure. Some designs have an in­teg­rated dis­play for ease of use, but this still re­quires the op­er­at­or to be phys­ic­ally near the in­stru­ment to view alarms, min-max val­ues and oth­er para­met­ers.

Re­mote di­git­al dia­gnostics

However, the in­clu­sion of IO-Link and Bürkert büS (the lat­ter based on CAN­open) in the ELE­MENT Neut­rino ver­sions of the Type 8222 and Type 8202 provides a more power­ful solu­tion. Firstly, op­er­at­ors are no longer lim­ited to a few out­puts, but have ac­cess to a wealth of dia­gnost­ic data on many oth­er factors that af­fect the per­form­ance and con­di­tion of the sensors.

And all of this can be ac­cessed re­motely. De­pend­ing on the op­er­at­or's pref­er­ence, real-time data can be made avail­able at the PLC, in SCADA sys­tems, in the cloud or in loc­al stor­age. This gives OEMs, sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors, con­tract­ors and end users a wide range of re­mote mon­it­or­ing op­tions.

Be­ne­fits for all sensor ex­perts

The abil­ity to stream­line main­ten­ance through re­mote mon­it­or­ing is a key be­ne­fit. Dia­gnostics can be car­ried out to de­term­ine the con­di­tion of equip­ment and the nature of po­ten­tial re­pairs be­fore vis­it­ing the site. This al­lows the right spares to be pre­pared be­fore leav­ing the work­shop, avoid­ing mul­tiple trips. This gives OEMs the op­por­tun­ity to of­fer products that act­ively re­duce main­ten­ance re­quire­ments and costs. For end users, ac­cur­ate real-time sensor and pro­cess data en­ables a more pro­act­ive ap­proach to equip­ment main­ten­ance which, com­bined with re­duced main­ten­ance, sig­ni­fic­antly im­proves up­time and pro­ductiv­ity - all while re­du­cing op­er­at­ing costs. Sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors be­ne­fit from easy com­mis­sion­ing and set­ting of sensor para­met­ers via a laptop, elim­in­at­ing the time and cost of wir­ing tra­di­tion­al sys­tems. In ad­di­tion, the use of in­dus­tri­al pro­to­cols provides more op­por­tun­it­ies for in­teg­ra­tion with oth­er equip­ment in a plant, such as valves.

The new IO-Link and Bürkert büS em­bed­ded products are com­ple­ment­ary for wa­ter qual­ity ap­plic­a­tions. The Type 8202 of­fers the abil­ity to meas­ure pH as well as the ox­id­a­tion re­duc­tion po­ten­tial (redox) of a flu­id. Mean­while, the Type 8222 as­sesses con­duct­iv­ity, de­tect­ing the levels of so­di­um chlor­ide, hy­po­chlor­ous acid or cal­ci­um car­bon­ate (hard­ness) in wa­ter. It is also avail­able for the Type 8228, an in­duct­ive con­duct­iv­ity meter that is pop­u­lar in chem­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions.
 

Re­solve Op­tics has de­veloped a be­spoke lens cap­able of pro­du­cing clear day and night vis­ion im­ages.  Rob Watkin­son, sales man­ager at Re­solve Op­tics said “Our cus­tom­er’s re­quire­ment was for a lens cap­able of fo­cus­ing on 2 sep­ar­ate im­age planes serving dif­fer­ent wave­bands and be able to rap­idly switch between them. One wave­band be­ing used for day­light op­er­a­tion and the oth­er for night vis­ion. Our team of en­gin­eers and de­sign­ers came up with a nov­el op­tic­al solu­tion that uses a com­bin­a­tion of mo­tors and photo in­ter­rupters to quickly drive the lens from one fo­cus po­s­i­tion to an­oth­er. The lens was also equipped with a mo­tor­ised iris to al­low fast re­mote ad­just­ment of the aper­ture to help com­pensate for the very dif­fer­ent op­tim­al light­ing con­di­tions dur­ing the day and at night­time”.

The new mo­tor­ised lens has been shown in op­er­a­tion to pro­duce clear, sharp im­ages with great col­our re­pro­duc­tion, low noise and min­im­al dis­tor­tion. 
Man­aging Dir­ect­or of Re­solve Op­tics, Mark Pontin ad­ded “With dec­ades of ex­per­i­ence we are uniquely placed to design and de­vel­op cus­tom op­tic­al lenses for a wide range of ima­ging ap­plic­a­tions no mat­ter what the format or re­quired res­ol­u­tion”.

Cus­tom­iz­a­tion with the highest pos­sible avail­ab­il­ity

He ad­ded “When de­vel­op­ing a new cus­tom lens, we take the de­mands of your ap­plic­a­tion in­to ac­count from the very be­gin­ning. We can op­tim­ise lens per­form­ance for a cer­tain work­ing dis­tance, over a spe­cif­ic wave­band and design a lens to cam­era mount to ex­actly meet your re­quire­ments. Re­solve Op­tics has also worked with cus­tom­ers to pro­duce spe­cial­ist ima­ging lenses that provide wide fields of view with little or no dis­tor­tion and com­pact lens designs where the tar­get ap­plic­a­tion is space lim­ited. Our ima­ging lenses can also be athermal­ized and rug­gedised to with­stand the harshest en­vir­on­ments. To en­sure se­cur­ity of sup­ply, Re­solve Op­tics will guar­an­tee that your cus­tom ima­ging lenses will be avail­able for as long as they are re­quired”.

Spe­cially de­signed for ther­mo­graph­ic meas­ure­ment tasks in­volving very high tem­per­at­ures and chal­len­ging ma­ter­i­als are SWIR in­frared cam­er­as Im­ageIR® 8100 and Im­ageIR® 9100. Both ther­mo­graphy sys­tems op­er­ate in the short­wave in­frared (SWIR) range and ex­tend In­fraTec's ther­mo­graph­ic tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment port­fo­lio. In high-tem­per­at­ure ap­plic­a­tions between 300 °C and 1,700 °C, for ex­ample, they en­able emissiv­ity-op­tim­ised tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ments on metal­lic sur­faces. Oth­er ap­plic­a­tions in­clude ad­dit­ive man­u­fac­tur­ing and laser ap­plic­a­tions, weld­ing pro­cesses and press harden­ing in the met­al in­dustry.

Dif­fer­ent res­ol­u­tions – ra­diomet­ric­ally cal­ib­rated

The cam­er­as do not re­quire a mech­an­ic­al cool­er. This makes them suit­able for main­ten­ance-free con­tinu­ous op­er­a­tion. With the new In­fraTec SWIR cam­er­as, users have at their dis­pos­al ther­mo­graph­ic cam­er­as that are equipped with a high de­gree of meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy as well as very good short and long-term sta­bil­ity.

Com­pact, ro­bust and easy to handle 

The mod­ern in­ter­face concept makes it easy to con­trol the cam­era and to ac­quire data in full frame format up to 237 Hz. Com­bined with the con­trol and ana­lys­is soft­ware of the IR­BIS® 3 fam­ily, the new SWIR in­frared cam­er­as from In­fraTec are a ver­sat­ile tool for nu­mer­ous mon­it­or­ing and meas­ur­ing tasks.

With their com­pact design and low weight, the Im­ageIR® 8100 and Im­ageIR® 9100 SWIR in­frared cam­er­as are ideal for in­teg­ra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing sys­tem en­vir­on­ments. The Im­ageIR® 8100 and Im­ageIR® 9100 are ex­tremely rugged and per­form well in harsh en­vir­on­ments. With the in­cluded Soft­ware De­vel­op­ment Kit (SDK), all cam­era fea­tures are eas­ily ac­cess­ible.
 

Nowadays, factor­ies are highly net­worked – which is the only way to ex­ploit the be­ne­fits of In­dustry 4.0, such as in­creased pro­cess ef­fi­ciency, high­er qual­ity or new busi­ness mod­els for pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance. When it comes to net­work­ing tech­no­logy, most firms opt for Eth­er­net. It of­fers high trans­fer rates and a uni­fied pro­tocol across all levels of the auto­ma­tion pyr­am­id: from op­er­at­ing level with ERP and Of­fice sys­tems in of­fices to con­trol cab­in­ets at con­trol level right down to - where ex­actly? At field level, where in­di­vidu­al sensors re­port their switch­ing sig­nals and meas­ured val­ues, clas­sic field­bus sys­tems still dom­in­ate, at least in the pro­cess in­dustry. Like the PROFIB­US PA, for ex­ample, they are ex­tremely slow with a max­im­um of 31.25 kBit/s and need gate­ways that will trans­fer field­bus pro­tocol in­to Eth­er­net pro­tocol so that in­form­a­tion at the top of the auto­ma­tion pyr­am­id can be fur­ther pro­cessed. If you ask pro­duc­tion ex­perts why they are so stub­bornly cling­ing to the old-fash­ioned solu­tions, you will mainly get the an­swer: be­cause there are no con­nec­tion sys­tems for Eth­er­net that meet all re­quire­ments at field level.

In ad­di­tion to a com­pact design and cable lengths of well over 100 metres, skep­tics mainly point to the lack of ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion of these con­nec­tions.

With Eth­er­net Ad­vanced Phys­ic­al Lay­er (APL for short), these ob­jec­tions no longer ap­ply. Eth­er­net APL adds im­port­ant prop­er­ties to the Eth­er­net phys­ic­al lay­er: it en­ables two­way com­mu­nic­a­tion over dis­tances of up to 1000 metres at up to 10 Mbit/s and sup­plies con­nec­ted devices with en­ergy. Eth­er­net APL sup­ports every Eth­er­net-based pro­tocol. This is why sev­er­al user or­gan­isa­tions are work­ing to­geth­er on Eth­er­net APL, in­clud­ing the OPC Found­a­tion and Profib­us/Profinet In­ter­na­tion­al.

In­trins­ic­ally safe Eth­er­net

The pro­cess in­dustry and com­pan­ies with po­ten­tially ex­plos­ive sys­tems are par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in Eth­er­net APL. For them, "nor­mal" Eth­er­net was ta­boo in the past be­cause it did not of­fer suf­fi­cient safety against fly­ing sparks and fire. The new dir­ect­ive is based on this and sets high re­quire­ments for ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion.

This means that the amount of en­ergy stored in the cable is lim­ited and no sparks can be dis­charged. To this end, the elec­tric­al para­met­ers for cables, such as ca­pa­city and in­duct­ance, are tight, and the shield­ing is de­signed to re­li­ably block in­ter­fer­ence sig­nals. In areas at a par­tic­u­larly high risk of ex­plo­sion, the en­tire in­stall­a­tion should be in­trins­ic­ally safe. No sparks or fires are per­mit­ted what­so­ever, even if the cable is cut through or if de­fect­ive equip­ment is re­placed dur­ing on­go­ing op­er­a­tion. IEC TS 60079-47, also known as 2-WISE, is sig­ni­fic­ant here. The ab­bre­vi­ation stands for Two-wire In­trins­ic­ally Safe Eth­er­net. 2-WISE sets pre­cise spe­cific­a­tions for in­trins­ic­ally safe Eth­er­net APL, both for tech­nic­al prop­er­ties of com­pon­ents and for the design, in­stall­a­tion and doc­u­ment­a­tion of a net­work.

Single-pair Eth­er­net cables are al­ways the basis for Eth­er­net APL. SPE cables have only one core pair in­stead of four pairs, mean­ing they need less space, which makes in­stall­a­tion easi­er in tight ma­chines. These two cores are also used to sup­ply power to con­nec­ted devices.

Blue is for APL

LAPP is one of the pi­on­eers in Single Pair Eth­er­net and is in­volved in Eth­er­net APL in the user com­mit­tees. The lead­ing pro­vider of in­teg­rated solu­tions and branded products in the field of cable and con­nec­tion tech­no­logy of­fers two cables spe­cific­ally for Eth­er­net APL: ETH­ER­LINE® T1L Y FC 1x2x18/1 AWG and ETH­ER­LINE® T1L Y 1x2x18/7 AWG. Both cables meet ISO/IEC 11801 and EN 50173 and the trans­mis­sion prop­er­ties in ac­cord­ance with IEC-61156-13CD. They are also UL-cer­ti­fied, mak­ing them suit­able for use in North Amer­ica – a ma­jor ad­vant­age for ex­port-ori­ented com­pan­ies. Suit­able for dis­tances up to 1000 meters, they are flame re­tard­ant, UV and oil res­ist­ant. Both can sup­ply devices with a power of up to 92 watts via Power over Dataline (PoDL). Both have the Fast Con­nect design de­veloped by LAPP, mean­ing they can be stripped and as­sembled very eas­ily. The only dif­fer­ence is ETH­ER­LINE® T1L Y FC 1x2x18/1 AWG has con­duct­ors made of sol­id wire for fixed in­stall­a­tion, while ETH­ER­LINE® T1L Y 1x2x18/7 AWG, with its sev­en-wire con­duct­or struc­ture, is suit­able for oc­ca­sion­al mo­bile use. To en­sure that the cables are suit­able for use in prac­tice, they were de­veloped and jointly tested ac­cord­ing to the re­quire­ments of a lead­ing Ger­man chem­ic­al com­pany.

On the out­side, the two cables dif­fer from con­ven­tion­al Eth­er­net or Profinet cables due to their blue sheath, which is defined in the dir­ect­ive for Eth­er­net APL. There are also minor in­tern­al dif­fer­ences com­pared to con­ven­tion­al SPE cables. Core dia­met­er, strand­ing of the twis­ted pair, in­su­la­tion thick­ness – sev­er­al para­met­ers had to be ad­jus­ted to meet the in­creased re­quire­ments for in­trins­ic ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion.

“Har­mon­ising all these para­met­ers in such a way that they meet the re­quire­ments for Eth­er­net APL is an art,” says Chris­ti­an Il­lenseer, Product Man­ager for In­dus­tri­al Com­mu­nic­a­tion at LAPP. For Mr Il­lenseer, when they are used in as many dif­fer­ent ap­plic­a­tion scen­ari­os as pos­sible, the wheat is really sep­ar­ated from the chaff.

Com­pre­hens­ive cer­ti­fic­a­tion means the two cables from LAPP are for uni­ver­sal use, for ex­ample in an open cable tray next to a power cable. Chris­ti­an Il­lenseer ad­vises com­pan­ies, es­pe­cially from the pro­cess in­dustry, as well as in­stallers to now look at Eth­er­net APL, as it brings use­ful in­nov­a­tions for great­er safety in net­work­ing at field level: “Eth­er­net APL is an up­grade for field level that brings more power and more op­por­tun­it­ies for di­git­al­isa­tion to the pro­cess in­dustry while sim­ul­tan­eously en­sur­ing max­im­um safety.”