The new German green energy company HH2E is one of the first companies in the country to produce hydrogen from renewable energy on a large scale. The hydrogen specialist is currently planning the construction of a large-scale electrolysis plant at the Lubmin energy site in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and intends to start producing green hydrogen there from 2026. HH2E also relies on AERZEN's technologies and expertise. An agreement has been reached for the supply of three VRW 536M packages for the plant on the Baltic coast. The aim is to intensify the partnership in the long term.

As a strong partner to the process gas industry, AERZEN is known for its high level of technology and solution expertise and is recognised as one of the most competent providers of technical solutions with maximum efficiency, reliability and cost-effectiveness. The hydrogen industry also relies on AERZEN's expertise and experience - as does the Hamburg-based company HH2E. AERZEN and HH2E have now agreed to work together to advance the energy transition.

HH2E drives the hydrogen transition forward

HH2E produces green hydrogen on an industrial scale using surplus electricity from wind and solar power and plans to install production plants in Germany with a total capacity of at least 4 GW by 2030. One plant is currently under construction in Lubmin. It uses the extensive energy infrastructure of the largest energy and industrial site in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and will have an initial capacity of 100 MW by 2026. This will enable it to produce around 6,000 tonnes (over 200,000 MWh) of green hydrogen per year. By 2030, capacity is expected to increase to over 1GW, equivalent to an annual production of over 60,000 tonnes of green hydrogen.

AERZEN delivers three VRW 536M for the hydrogen factory in Lubmin

For the hydrogen factory in Lubmin HH2E and AERZEN have agreed to supply three VRW 536M packages, each with a volume flow of approx. 4,700 m³/h and a final pressure of 8.0 bar (a), for an order value in the upper seven-figure range. The AERZEN VRW 536M was specially designed for efficient and safe compression of hydrogen and combines the advantages of an oil-free compressor (no contamination of the medium) with a high compression ratio (max. 10 bar (a)) and high efficiency, even with light gases (hydrogen/helium). The explosion-proof package offers a large turndown and can therefore optimally handle the fluctuations that typically occur when using renewable energies. As a screw compressor, the VRW 536M can also handle larger volume flows of up to 6,000 Nm³/h, making it the perfect link between electrolysers and high-pressure compressors. By pre-compressing (boosting) the large H₂ volume flows to higher intermediate pressures, the main compressors (reciprocating compressors) can be designed much smaller and more favourably. This enables significant cost savings.

AERZEN and HH2E are planning a long-term cooperation

"HH2E's projects are leading the way in green hydrogen production. We are delighted to be working with HH2E to contribute to the hydrogen transition and decarbonisation of industry. The VRW 536M enables the compression of saturated electrolysis hydrogen with unrivalled efficiency and differential pressure, making it an important building block for the hydrogen transition," emphasises Christian Meyer from AERZEN.

Karsten Kinzig, Head of Procurement at HH2E, adds: "HH2E stands for a flexible mix of complementary technologies. This makes it possible to utilise renewable energies on a large scale. Our aim is to offer hydrogen at fair prices. Innovative technology partners such as AERZEN support us in this endeavour. We look forward to building a long-term cooperation with AERZEN."
 

Syntegon is expanding its pharmaceutical processing and packaging business with the acquisition of Azbil Telstar. Telstar was previously part of Japan's Azbil Corporation. Telstar, based in Terrassa (Barcelona), Spain, is a manufacturer and supplier of equipment to the global life and health science industry. Telstar is an important addition to Syntegon's liquid pharmaceutical processing portfolio, with approximately 900 employees, manufacturing facilities in Spain, China and the UK, and engineering, sales and service offices around the world. Telstar will also benefit from further growth opportunities as part of the Syntegon Group. Syntegon and Azbil have agreed not to disclose financial details. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approval.

Seamless solutions from a single source

Telstar has a strong, experienced team serving pharmaceutical, life science and medical device customers around the world, particularly in Southern and Western Europe, the USA and India. Freeze dryers and loading/unloading systems, including comprehensive services, are key additions to Syntegon's portfolio and ideally complement its leading vial filling and isolator solutions. With the expanded portfolio, Syntegon will be even better positioned to offer both pharmaceutical manufacturers and CMOs complete one-stop solutions. In addition, the Syntegon service network will be significantly enhanced by the addition of Telstar service engineers, providing additional geographic coverage, proximity and application expertise.

Strategic expansion with innovative technologies

“Syntegon is world market leader in liquid vial filling. With the acquisition of Telstar, we will enhance our portfolio of innovative technologies and many successful references in the market. Our customers will benefit from even more comprehensive solutions, seamless processes, and lifecycle services,” says Torsten Türling, CEO of the Syntegon Group. “At the same time, we can jointly capture growth opportunities and expand our market presence.”

“For Telstar, the incorporation into the Syntegon Group represents a great opportunity to ensure stable business development and future growth. We look forward to bringing our knowledge, expertise, and high-value technologies for aseptic manufacturing to the joint portfolio and to becoming part of the Syntegon team, backed by a shared business culture,” says Jordi Puig, CEO of Telstar.
 

“We are thrilled to mark this mile­stone. Over the past 50 years, the mar­ket's de­mands have evolved, and our com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing in­nov­at­ive solu­tions and re­li­able ser­vice has re­mained stead­fast. We look for­ward to con­tinu­ing our jour­ney with our cus­tom­ers, help­ing them achieve their goals with our cut­ting-edge tech­no­lo­gies,” says Virpi Var­jon­en, man­aging dir­ect­or of En­dress+Haus­er Den­mark. En­dress+Haus­er Den­mark was foun­ded in 1974 and is cur­rently home to 37 ded­ic­ated em­ploy­ees who provide com­pre­hens­ive sup­port in pro­cess in­stru­ment­a­tion, sys­tem solu­tions and ser­vices for in­dus­tries such as food & bever­age, life sci­ence, wa­ter & wastewa­ter, power & en­ergy. The of­fice is loc­ated in Søborg near Copen­ha­gen.

En­dress+Haus­er Den­mark is on a growth path, hav­ing in­ves­ted in ex­pand­ing the fa­cil­ity and the work­force to serve the mar­ket and cus­tom­ers even bet­ter. The com­pany is cur­rently build­ing a new state-of-the-art ser­vice and train­ing cen­ter and con­tin­ues to strengthen the ser­vice of­fer­ing and wel­com­ing new tal­ents. “As we look to the fu­ture, we re­main ded­ic­ated to serving our cus­tom­ers with the same pas­sion and in­nov­a­tion that have defined our first 50 years,“ con­cludes Virpi Var­jon­en.
 

In 2023, HIMA generated sales of 151.4 million euros, which corresponds to organic growth of 12%. The integration of Sella Controls, which was acquired in February 2023, increased sales by a total of 20%. "Our growth strategy, which is based on the digitalization of functional safety with added value in parallel with international expansion, paid off in 2023," says Jörg de la Motte, CEO of the HIMA Group.

"HIMA continued to grow profitably in 2023 – for our shareholders this is a good basis for further investments," adds Dr. Michael Löbig, CFO of the HIMA Group. By region, Europe dominates the business of the HIMA Group with a 55% share of sales. This is followed by Asia (20%) and the Middle East (17%). The Americas account for 8% of sales.

Strengthening global presence and expansion

The HIMA Group is consistently continuing its international expansion. Following the acquisition of Sella Controls in the UK last year, the HIMA Group also acquired the Norwegian technology company Origo Solutions in February 2024. "Sella Controls and Origo Solutions are making a significant contribution to taking the HIMA Group’s solution portfolio to a new level internationally," explains Jörg de la Motte. "We are making very good progress with integration," adds Dr. Michael Löbig. 

The local presence was expanded with new locations in Saudi Arabia and the expansion of the group companies in Slovakia and the Middle East. A subsidiary in India will be opened before the end of this year. In countries where the HIMA Group does not have its own company, the partner program is being expanded as qualified partners extend the company’s engineering and support capabilities.

HIMA continues to drive the digitalization of functional safety in the process industry. "Our solutions for the digitalization of the safety lifecycle support operators with key tasks that are essential for safe and compliant operations," explains Jörg de la Motte.
 

At the Han­nov­er Messe found­ing mem­bers ABB (in­clud­ing B&R), Cap­gem­ini, Mi­crosoft, Rock­well Auto­ma­tion, Schneider Elec­tric (in­clud­ing AVEVA) and Siemens an­nounced col­lab­or­a­tion on a new ini­ti­at­ive to de­liv­er in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity for In­dus­tri­al IoT eco­sys­tems.

Hos­ted by the Linux Found­a­tion and open to fur­ther in­ter­ested parties, the Margo ini­ti­at­ive draws its name from the Lat­in word for 'edge' and will define mech­an­isms for in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity between ap­plic­a­tions, devices and or­ches­tra­tion soft­ware at the edge of in­dus­tri­al eco­sys­tems. In par­tic­u­lar, Margo will make it easy to run and com­bine ap­plic­a­tions from any eco­sys­tem mem­ber on top of the hard­ware and runtime sys­tem of any oth­er mem­ber. Margo aims to de­liv­er on its in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity prom­ise through a mod­ern and agile open-source ap­proach, which will bring in­dus­tri­al com­pan­ies in­creased flex­ib­il­ity, sim­pli­city and scalab­il­ity as they un­der­go di­git­al trans­ition in com­plex, multi-vendor en­vir­on­ments.

“Mas­ter­ing ef­fi­ciency, flex­ib­il­ity and qual­ity faster than com­pet­it­ors is key to suc­cess in today’s in­dus­tri­al world,” said Bernhard Es­cher­mann, CTO, ABB Pro­cess Auto­ma­tion. “Di­git­al­iz­a­tion can help de­liv­er on these be­ne­fits, but di­git­al eco­sys­tems re­quire a ro­bust, se­cure and in­ter­op­er­able frame­work at the edge, con­nect­ing op­er­a­tions and in­form­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies. For ABB, a long-stand­ing ad­voc­ate of open auto­ma­tion sys­tems, driv­ing a for­ward-think­ing col­lab­or­at­ive ini­ti­at­ive like Margo is key to achiev­ing this goal.”

In­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity is key to di­git­al trans­form­a­tion at scale

"The more sources you get data from, the bet­ter the de­cisions you can make," ex­plained Flori­an Schnee­ber­ger, CTO of ABB's Ma­chine Auto­ma­tion di­vi­sion (B&R). "Yet, while the be­ne­fits of di­git­al­iz­a­tion in­crease with scale, so do the chal­lenges of nav­ig­at­ing het­ero­gen­eous in­dus­tri­al eco­sys­tems. That's why in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity is so cru­cial to un­lock­ing the full po­ten­tial of di­git­al­iz­a­tion. It em­powers or­gan­iz­a­tions to ad­opt and scale In­dus­tri­al IoT solu­tions at full speed without large teams of IT spe­cial­ists."

In March 2024, ABB be­came a mem­ber of the Linux Found­a­tion. This will en­able the com­pany to fur­ther en­hance ef­forts in pro­mot­ing open com­munity col­lab­or­a­tion, help­ing un­lock in­nov­a­tion and en­able bet­ter products and ex­per­i­ences for cus­tom­ers. This fur­ther strengthens ABB’s com­mit­ment to open stand­ard based sys­tems.

In a live pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Han­nov­er Messe, rep­res­ent­at­ives from the six found­ing mem­bers met to present their vis­ion for edge in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity in the In­dus­tri­al IoT and ap­peal to like-minded in­dustry peers to join the com­munity and con­trib­ute to build­ing a mean­ing­ful and ef­fect­ive stand­ard. A re­cord­ing of the pan­el dis­cus­sion will be avail­able at www.margo.org.
 

The stra­tegic mer­ger en­ables De Di­et­rich to en­rich and broaden its port­fo­lio of solu­tions for its cus­tom­ers, of­fer­ing the most com­pre­hens­ive premi­um range on the mar­ket. The ac­quis­i­tion makes the Group glob­al lead­er in sol­id-li­quid sep­ar­a­tion and dry­ing of act­ive in­gredi­ents. With four ad­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion sites in Europe, De Di­et­rich Pro­cess Sys­tems will have man­u­fac­tur­ing sites in France, Ger­many, Neth­er­lands, Italy, Spain, Switzer­land, Hun­gary and the Czech Re­pub­lic. This ac­quis­i­tion also en­ables the Group to ex­tend its pres­ence on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and con­sol­id­ate its lead­er­ship in Asia and the United States.

Through its re­cog­nised brands HEINKEL, COMBER, BOLZ-SUM­MIX and JONGIA, the HEINKEL Group has es­tab­lished it­self as a premi­um sup­pli­er of sol­id-li­quid sep­ar­a­tion solu­tions, dry­ing and mix­ing sys­tems, mainly for the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al, chem­ic­al and food in­dus­tries. It has es­tab­lished priv­ileged re­la­tion­ships with its in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tom­ers through its ex­pert­ise and tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tion.

Loc­al mod­el serving a rap­idly evolving in­dustry

By com­ple­ment­ing its of­fer­ings in emer­ging mar­kets such as re­cyc­ling and the en­vir­on­ment, this struc­tur­ing ac­quis­i­tion po­s­i­tions De Di­et­rich Pro­cess Sys­tems on a con­tinu­ous growth tra­ject­ory with rev­en­ue pro­spects ex­ceed­ing 300 mil­lion euros and sol­id op­er­a­tion­al per­form­ance. This is the first ma­jor ex­tern­al growth op­er­a­tion con­duc­ted fol­low­ing the 100% takeover of the com­pany by the fam­ily hold­ing com­pany (Financière Jaer­ger­th­al) in Janu­ary 2023.

Jacques Moulin, Pres­id­ent of De Di­et­rich Pro­cess Sys­tems, com­ments: "De Di­et­rich Pro­cess Sys­tems and the HEINKEL Group share com­mon val­ues, in­clud­ing fam­ily val­ues, and the am­bi­tion to pre­serve a strong man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dustry in Europe. The tech­no­lo­gies provided by the newly formed group are es­sen­tial for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of act­ive in­gredi­ents and vi­tal chem­ic­als in Europe. We con­trib­ute to the con­tin­ent's eco­nom­ic growth and re­in­force our com­mit­ment to a more loc­al and sus­tain­able in­dustry. We fur­ther im­prove our abil­ity to an­ti­cip­ate the new needs of our cli­ents by provid­ing them with ever more in­nov­at­ive, ef­fi­cient, and sus­tain­able solu­tions."

Steen-Hansen has been a lead­ing pro­vider of an­ti­foul­ing coat­ings for nets in in­dus­tri­al fish farm­ing for more than 30 years. An­ti­foul­ing coat­ings re­duce the growth of al­gae and oth­er or­gan­isms on the nets, mean­ing they can be used for longer peri­ods of time. In ad­di­tion to con­ven­tion­al cop­per-based an­ti­foul­ing coat­ings, cop­per-re­duced – not to men­tion com­pletely cop­per-free and biocide-free coat­ings – are be­com­ing in­creas­ingly im­port­ant in the fish farm­ing in­dustry. Steen-Hansen is a pi­on­eer in the de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­ture of coat­ing solu­tions like these with a re­duced en­vir­on­ment­al foot­print.

In­nov­at­ive coat­ings call for new pro­cess tech­no­logy

Man­u­fac­turer Steen-Hansen ini­tially used dis­solv­ers, which it also used for its cop­per-based coat­ings, to make these in­nov­at­ive an­ti­foul­ing coat­ings. However, the com­pany found that us­ing con­ven­tion­al pro­duc­tion tech­niques for cop­per-re­duced or cop­per-free coat­ings res­ul­ted in qual­ity de­fi­cien­cies, since the long pro­cess times in the dis­solv­er caused strong, un­desir­able foam­ing in the product. 

Sev­er­al factors were re­spons­ible for this foam­ing. On the one hand, powders con­tain a great deal of air. Even heavy powders such as ti­tani­um di­ox­ide con­tain more than 75% air by volume. If this air is not fully sub­sti­tuted by li­quid and sep­ar­ated, but rather dis­persed to­geth­er with the powder particles, this cre­ates mi­cro foam, which is ex­actly what hap­pens in a dis­solv­er pro­cess. Ad­di­tion­ally, the fact that – in a dis­solv­er – the powder is ad­ded to the open ves­sel from above leads to the cre­ation of vor­texes, which in­tro­duce large amounts of ad­di­tion­al air. Since Steen-Hansen‘s products are wa­ter-based, an­oth­er factor is the pro­cess wa­ter foam­ing, re­gard­less of the tech­no­logy used.

Steen-Hansen man­aged to coun­ter­act this un­desir­able foam­ing by us­ing de­foamers, but only to a cer­tain ex­tent. This is why the com­pany was look­ing for a way to dis­perse the powdered raw ma­ter­i­als in a gentler, more product-friendly way, ul­ti­mately opt­ing for the tech­no­logy offered by mix­ing and dis­per­sion tech­no­logy spe­cial­ist ys­tral. ‘ys­tral’s pro­cess en­gin­eer­ing solu­tion al­lowed us to over­come the qual­ity prob­lems and, at the same time, sig­ni­fic­antly shorten our pro­duc­tion times,’ re­por­ted Stig Bjarte Fager­lid (plant man­ager at Steen-Hansen AS). 

In the ys­tral pro­cess sys­tem in­stalled in 2019, the in­tense pro­cess steps of powder wet­ting and dis­per­sion take place out­side the ves­sel with the YS­TRAL Conti-TDS in­line powder wet­ting and dis­pers­ing ma­chine, while the con­tents of the ves­sel are sim­ul­tan­eously mixed in a con­tinu­ously ho­mo­gen­eous man­ner with a YS­TRAL Jet­stream Mix­er. 

Us­ing the va­cu­um ex­pan­sion meth­od, the in­line dis­pers­er achieves com­plete deag­glom­er­a­tion and wet­ting of the powder particles in a mat­ter of mi­cro­seconds. Due to an in­duc­tion va­cu­um built up dir­ectly in the wet­ting and dis­pers­ing zone, the air con­tained in the powder is ex­pan­ded many times over, enorm­ously in­creas­ing the dis­tances between the particles and al­low­ing the particles to be com­pletely wet­ted im­me­di­ately, one by one, on con­tact with the li­quid. The air con­tained in the powder is sep­ar­ated from the sig­ni­fic­antly heav­ier dis­per­sion through the cent­ri­fu­gal ef­fect of the fast-run­ning ro­tor and co­alesces to large air bubbles. These are then pumped to the pro­cess ves­sel with the li­quid flow, where they can eas­ily es­cape. There are no vor­texes and there is no ad­di­tion­al air in­take dur­ing the en­tire pro­cess. This can help to sig­ni­fic­antly re­duce the use of de­foamers.

One sup­pli­er for in­fra­struc­ture tech­no­lo­gies 
Based on this ex­per­i­ence, the com­pany de­cided to in­stall two more ys­tral pro­cess sys­tems while mod­ern­ising and ex­pand­ing its pro­duc­tion ca­pa­cit­ies. ‘We com­pletely re­or­gan­ised our pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies as part of a re­lo­ca­tion, and aligned our en­tire pro­duc­tion in­fra­struc­ture with ys­tral tech­no­lo­gies,’ com­men­ted Mr Fager­lid. ‘ys­tral tech­no­lo­gies al­low us to fully auto­mate our pro­duc­tion pro­cesses. But, at our old site, we were un­able to ex­ploit this po­ten­tial. So we used the move as an op­por­tun­ity to com­pre­hens­ively auto­mate the peri­pher­al devices of the ys­tral sys­tems with powder and li­quid hand­ling.’
Where­as, at the old pro­duc­tion site, the op­er­at­ors still opened bags manu­ally and poured their con­tents in­to the ys­tral sys­tem’s powder hop­per, now all the powder ma­ter­i­als are fed from the silo to the ys­tral sys­tems by means of a fully auto­mat­ic chain con­vey­or. 
At its new site, Steen-Hansen uses one sys­tem each for pro­du­cing an­ti­foul­ing coat­ings con­tain­ing cop­per, for mak­ing cop­per-free coat­ings, and for man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tri­al paints. A sys­tem con­sists of two pro­cess ves­sels with YS­TRAL Jet­stream Mix­ers, a powder ves­sel and the YS­TRAL Conti-TDS in­line dis­pers­er, which is op­er­ated al­tern­ately on one of the two pro­cess ves­sels. While powder and li­quid hand­ling at Steen-Hansen is per­formed us­ing a cent­ral con­trol sys­tem, each sys­tem is fed from sep­ar­ate silos and tanks. This elim­in­ates the pos­sib­il­ity of the cop­per-free coat­ing products be­ing con­tam­in­ated with cop­per particles, for ex­ample.

Fully auto­mat­ic pro­duc­tion

The YS­TRAL Con­trol Sys­tem (YCS) Pro­fes­sion­al + – the ys­tral con­trol sys­tem with the highest de­gree of auto­ma­tion – is used as the con­trol soft­ware for the three sys­tems. The op­er­at­or starts and mon­it­ors the pro­cess us­ing a graph­ic­al user in­ter­face, and dos­ing and feed­ing of the li­quid com­pon­ents and solids is fully auto­mat­ic. Every single pro­cess step is ex­actly re­pro­du­cible, and cre­at­ing new re­cipes is child’s play with the re­cipe hand­ler.

By us­ing mod­ern mix­ing and dis­pers­ing tech­no­logy and cent­rally con­trolled peri­pher­al devices with auto­mated feed­ing and dos­ing of powder and li­quid com­pon­ents, Steen-Hansen suc­cess­fully tripled its pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city at its new site, all the while keep­ing its staff levels the same. The three ys­tral sys­tems can be op­er­ated by just one em­ploy­ee. With the dis­solv­ers pre­vi­ously used, the pro­cess of­ten las­ted one to two hours, but this was shortened to between 10 and 15 minutes with the ys­tral tech­no­logy. While Steen-Hansen was barely able to meet the rap­idly grow­ing de­mand for its products with the pro­duc­tion in­fra­struc­ture it used pre­vi­ously, even in two-shift op­er­a­tion, it has now switched to one-shift op­er­a­tion in the new fact­ory.

The sig­ni­fic­antly short­er pro­cess time also goes hand in hand with a con­sid­er­able re­duc­tion in en­ergy con­sump­tion - which is par­tic­u­larly im­port­ant to Nor­we­gi­an pro­du­cer Steen-Hansen, since elec­tri­city prices are high in Nor­way. Meas­ured in terms of elec­tri­city de­mand per litre of fin­ished product, Steen-Hansen cut its elec­tri­city de­mand at the new site by about 75% – simply by us­ing more ef­fi­cient mix­ing and dis­pers­ing tech­no­logy and en­ergy-sav­ing build­ing tech­no­logy.
 

To limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) recommends in its Special Report on Global Warming, among other things, the use of hydrogen and, in a number of cases, the capture, use and storage of CO₂ (CCUS). For the offshore plants needed to produce green hydrogen or for CCUS to be operated economically, the technology applied must become significantly more costeffective to purchase and operate than it has been up to date. To achieve this, Bosch Rexroth is expanding its portfolio of subsea actuators with additional variants and motion options to electrify and digitalize all safety-relevant movements at depths of up to 4,000 meters.

In the offshore storage of CO₂ as well as in the intermediate storage of green hydrogen, valves regulate the controlled flow of process gases and fluids. Up to now, these valves have mostly been operated by hydraulically driven actuators. This requires central hydraulic power units above water with kilometers of pipelines to the individual actuators on the seabed. Newly developed eSEA actuators supplied with 24 V low-voltage (DC) are an economical alternative to these capital- and energy-intensive conventional hydraulic systems. Their lower power consumption reduces operating costs. In addition, digital twins increase process reliability with condition monitoring.

Bosch Rexroth is now adding the eSEA Push actuator for linear movements and the eSEA Drive for applications with very high torques in excess of 35 kNm to its actuator for rotary movements (eSEA Torque), which has won several international technology awards. This means that all movements required for a safe and reliable valve control under water can be now controlled and executed purely electrically, with a standardized interface.

Safe without electric energy and with self-monitoring 

All variants use the fail-safe principle, in which spring elements are actively clamped to keep the valve either open or closed. If the power supply fails, the clamping is released, and the valve automatically moves to the safe position in accordance with IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 without the need for expensive safety-relevant subsea batteries. Bosch Rexroth supplies the eSEA actuators with interface to external sensors and process valves as well as with digital twins of these assemblies. The control hardware is based on electronics from the automobile industry. The solution also comprises software, including machine learning applied for the embedded condition monitoring. On the basis of internal and external sensors and measured values, the condition of the overall system and impending wear can be detected before a failure occurs. If a sensor fails, the digital twin can take over and ensure continued operation.

Small energy requirement for low and high loads

The eSEA actuators significantly reduce the energy requirements of subsea systems. They also connect increasingly distant step-outs. In some cases, these are valves located more than one hundred kilometers from the coast, which also have to be controlled via actuators. eSEA Push modularly covers the performance range for valves up to five inches in diameter up to 745 kN. The eSEA Drive is designed for larger diameters and torque requirements of more than 35 kNm. This unit generates the high forces via a decentralized drive module suitable for deep-sea use with a closed hydraulic circuit and special protective measures to prevent hydraulic fluid contamination.

All eSEA actuators from Bosch Rexroth are designed for a safe and reliable operation over 25 years permanent subsea. Replacement is possible with subsea robots without impairing the function of the valves. The digital twins reduce the engineering and commissioning costs of the actuators for new systems.

They can also be retrofitted in existing installations.

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”.

With its four EL336x Eth­er­CAT ana­log in­put ter­min­als, Beck­hoff is of­fer­ing a par­tic­u­larly com­pact and cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion for in­teg­rat­ing weigh­ing func­tions in­to con­trol sys­tems. The in­teg­ra­tion of the sup­ply voltage for the load cells is par­tic­u­larly ad­vant­age­ous.

For res­ist­ance bridges or load sells

The EL3361-0100 and EL3362-0100 Eth­er­CAT ana­log in­put ter­min­als fea­ture ana­log in­puts for the dir­ect con­nec­tion of one or two res­ist­ance bridges (strain gauges) or load cells in a 4-wire or 6-wire con­nec­tion sys­tem. The 10 V sensor sup­ply is already in­teg­rated. The ana­log value res­ol­u­tion is 24 bits and 10 ksps. For more de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions, the EL3361 and EL3362 also of­fer a switch­able sensor sup­ply (5/10 V) and di­git­al in­puts (e.g., for tare) and out­puts (e.g., for ready mes­sages) that can be con­trolled either loc­ally or via the con­trol­ler.

The EL336x ana­log ter­min­als are a wel­come ad­di­tion to Beck­hoff’s ex­ist­ing range of weigh­ing tech­no­logy, slot­ting in­to the port­fo­lio above the EL3351 and along­side the EL3356 with ad­di­tion­al func­tion­al­it­ies. The ELM350x Eth­er­CAT meas­ure­ment ter­min­als, which sup­port freely ad­justable fil­ters, quarter/half bridge cap­ab­il­ity, and even high­er sampling rates (also in con­nec­tion with the Twin­CAT 3 Weigh­ing Lib­rary), are the ideal solu­tion for the most de­mand­ing dy­nam­ic ap­plic­a­tions that re­quire an even great­er level of meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy.
 

The Kostal Inveor MPP and MPM frequency inverter solutions are now equipped with the "Vibration Monitoring" function as standard. During operation, the system can be monitored for irregularities caused by vibration. This often indicates progressive wear and imminent failure of mechanical components. The data is collected and can be further processed via MQTT. For the user, this is the gateway to predictive maintenance, which enables them to prevent unexpected failures and minimise downtime costs.

The use of the Inveor frequency inverter opens up cost-cutting potential both in terms of acquisition and commissioning as well as over the entire service life of the system.

Freedom of choice for motors 

The Inveor gives the user the greatest possible degree of freedom when configuring the drive system, as the drive controller is suitable for all types of motor. This means they can plan for the future and are less dependent on rare earths. Savings can also be made on acquisition costs, as the Inveor can optimally control any brand of motor, meaning that users are not forced to buy a more expensive system consisting of motor and inverter from the same supplier.

The Inveor frequency inverter is designed to be mounted directly onto the motor. Plug & Play creates a modular unit consisting of motor, gearbox and inverter it. Thanks to the large selection of adapter plates, any motor can be adapted. There is also the option of wall adaptation. Cost savings are achieved by eliminating the need for a control cabinet and long motor cables with appropriate shielding. 

Savings over the entire service life

The Inveor frequency inverters guarantee maximum efficiency in the operation of the drivetrain. Thanks to the optimised topology of the power electronics in combination with a unique control method, the Inveor ensures optimum energy utilisation, regardless of which motor technology is in use.

The sensorless control process is able to optimally recognise the rotor position and reliably control the motor, even at low speeds right up to standstill, without switching to control mode. This also saves energy. All in all, the Inveor frequency inverter is significantly better than required by the Ecodesign Directive.

The Inveor frequency inverters also have basic pump protection functions such as dry-running protection and blockage detection. An immediate switch-off and error message protects the motor and frequency inverter.

A multi-pump function is also on board. Up to 6 pumps can be controlled in a master-slave network. This ensures even wear of the pumps, taking into account the operating hours, and guarantees a constant supply pressure even with fluctuating delivery quantities. The auxiliary master function ensures high availability even if the master fails. At the same time, the fail-safety and reliability of the entire drive system is increased.

Advantages of sensorless control

Inveor frequency inverters control all motors completely without the use of a rotor position encoder. This saves the customer the costs for encoders, including installation, maintenance and interface. Without a sensor, the system is more fail-safe, heavy-duty capable, dynamic, safe and durable. 
 

The Soft­ing “aplSwitch Field” en­ables the trans­par­ent con­nec­tion of “Two-Wire In­trins­ic­ally Safe Eth­er­net” (2-WISE) Eth­er­net-APL field devices to high­er-level In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net net­works, provid­ing these devices with in­trins­ic­ally safe power. Ad­di­tion­ally, the “aplSwitch Field PA” vari­ant sup­ports the con­nec­tion of both Eth­er­net-APL field devices and PROFIB­US PA devices, en­sur­ing smooth in­teg­ra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing in­dus­tri­al sys­tems.

Seam­less in­teg­ra­tion and ro­bust design

The “aplSwitch Field” of­fers easy in­teg­ra­tion in­to lead­ing Dis­trib­uted Con­trol Sys­tems (DCS) and As­set Man­age­ment Sys­tems (AMS) with 16 Eth­er­net-APL spur "2-WISE" ports, sup­port­ing PROFINET with Me­dia Re­dund­ancy Pro­tocol (MRP) ring to­po­logy. It is com­pat­ible with ma­jor sys­tems like Emer­son, Siemens, and ABB, en­sur­ing stable net­works through in­gress/egress sup­port. Ex­tens­ive dia­gnostics are fa­cil­it­ated by in­teg­rated PROFINET func­tions and a loc­al dis­play, en­han­cing com­mis­sion­ing and main­ten­ance pro­cesses. The “aplSwitch Field” is de­signed for in­stall­a­tion in Ex Zone 2, with con­nectiv­ity for field devices in Ex Zone 0 and 1. It has a ro­bust hous­ing with pro­tec­tion class IP30.

Flex­ible power classes and mi­gra­tion op­tions

The “aplSwitch Field” vari­ant sup­ports both Power Class A and Power Class B. This en­sures that field devices with high­er power re­quire­ments can also be op­er­ated without any prob­lems. The PA vari­ant – “aplSwitch Field PA” – en­ables the mi­gra­tion of ex­ist­ing PA in­fra­struc­ture to Eth­er­net-APL to­po­logy. Eth­er­net-APL and PROFIB­US-PA devices can be used to­geth­er on one switch thanks to an in­teg­rated PROFINET proxy.

The of­fi­cial re­lease date for both switches will be Septem­ber 2024.
 

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.
 

By 2030, the Food and Ag­ri­cul­ture Or­gan­iz­a­tion of the United Na­tions (FAO) pre­dicts that 62 per­cent of fish and sea­food in­ten­ded for glob­al con­sump­tion will come from farms. As a res­ult of this de­vel­op­ment, the use of re­cir­cu­lat­ing aquacul­ture sys­tems (RAS) is be­com­ing in­creas­ingly im­port­ant: they re­quire less wa­ter and land over­all and are there­fore more flex­ible in terms of loc­a­tion. They also score points with high­er bi­o­se­c­ur­ity and pro­ductiv­ity, lower wastewa­ter volumes, simple mon­it­or­ing and are in­de­pend­ent of weath­er and en­vir­on­ment­al in­flu­ences. At the same time, however, the re­quire­ments for con­sist­ently safe and high-qual­ity RAS wa­ter treat­ment are in­creas­ing and ProM­in­ent of­fers products and solu­tions that ful­fil the re­quire­ments of the in­dustry in dif­fer­ent pro­cess stages.

The solu­tion: High-per­form­ance sys­tems for vari­ous pro­cess steps

Proven DUL­CODES UV sys­tems and the DUL­COZON OZLa ozone sys­tem are suit­able for the gentle and ef­fi­cient dis­in­fec­tion of wa­ter in RAS. The DUL­CODES UV LP-PE sys­tem, made of high-dens­ity plastic, is cor­ro­sion-free and salt wa­ter res­ist­ant. Due to the unique com­bin­a­tion of elec­tron­ic bal­last tech­no­logy and the pat­en­ted VARIO-Flux lamps, a par­tic­u­larly high de­gree of UVC ef­fi­ciency is achieved.

The DUL­COZON OZLa ozone sys­tem is char­ac­ter­ized by min­im­al en­ergy con­sump­tion and max­im­um space sav­ings. Thanks to mod­ules that can be switched on and off re­dund­antly, it of­fers a high level of op­er­a­tion­al re­li­ab­il­ity. The large and col­oured 10“ touch screen pan­el en­ables simple op­er­a­tion and clear pro­cess visu­al­iz­a­tion.

Floc­cu­lant meter­ing and pH ad­just­ment

The Poly­Rex meter­ing sys­tem sup­ports the sludge thick­en­ing pro­cess. The powder stor­age tank is filled dust­free by a va­cu­um con­vey­or. The double screw meter­ing unit with two counter-ro­tat­ing con­vey­or screws en­ables low-pulsa­tion and pre­cise meter­ing and en­sures the low­est pos­sible con­sump­tion of chem­ic­als. Con­trol­lers and pH sensors as well as meter­ing sta­tions and solen­oid dia­phragm meter­ing pumps from our com­pany are used to ad­just the pH value.

The pH value must be kept con­stant for the healthy growth of the fish. This is achieved by meter­ing cal­ci­um hy­drox­ide with a Poly­Rex sys­tem.

Sludge dewa­ter­ing

The ec­cent­ric screw pump SPEC­TRA is used for the mech­an­ic­al and bio­lo­gic­al puri­fic­a­tion of the wa­ter. It is used for the low pulsa­tion pump­ing of sludge. The res­ult: high-qual­ity wa­ter treat­ment for RAS from a single source with high-per­form­ance products from ProM­in­ent for op­er­a­tion­al re­li­ab­il­ity in small and large RAS. The con­sist­ently good wa­ter qual­ity en­sures smooth rear­ing of healthy fish and sea­food for con­sumers around the world.
 

The measurement of low flow is becoming widely used in many industries. However, the smaller the flow, the trickier it is to control and measure, and finding a suitable flow measuring technology at reasonable cost can prove challenging for both users and flow sensor manufacturers.

There is no set definition for ‘low flow’ in terms of measurement limits for fluidics handling. However, low-flow applications encounter amplified flow stability and performance issues not seen in larger flows. The minimal liquid volume being measured in low flows renders them highly sensitive, such that even the slightest disruptions in process or ambient conditions can exert a substantial impact on flow stability. Within the markets Titan Enterprises operates in, we consider low flow rates as those below 50 ml/min, with many customers seeking flow rates of between 2 and 20 ml/min.

Transport of concentrated liquids boosts increased need for measurement solutions 

Neil Hannay, Titan’s Senior R&D Engineer observes: “We are certainly seeing an increase in demand for low flow measurement technologies driven by various industries moving towards transporting heavily concentrated liquids, which are then diluted at the point of use. This translates into huge savings on transport and storage costs and also has a positive environmental impact.”

Whether cleaning fluid additives, syrups and flavourings for beer or soda, chemical additives for oil and fuel, paint pigments or administering drugs, low flow flowmeters are required to dose these concentrated fluids at the end process, dispensing the precise amount of liquid to the correct dilution.   

As mentioned, measuring low flow is a challenging application to satisfy. The amount of energy available in low liquid flow is unlikely to be sufficient to drive most mechanical flowmeters to give linear results. By comparison, electronic flow meters can be limited by sensitivity, zero drift and slow response times. Here we analyse 5 types of flow meter - Ultrasonic, Turbine, Oval Gear, Thermal and Coriolis - and their suitability for low flow measurement: 

Ultrasonic 

Ultrasonic flowmeters measure the velocity of flow. Titan's in-line Atrato© models, using patented time of flight technology, are capable of measuring flows down to 2ml/min. Lower flow rates equate to smaller signals to determine flow rate and as such, this lower signal strength can affect the flowmeter’s capability to produce repeatable measurement results.
Design challenge: Straight-forward engineering vs complex electronics. 
Advantages: High accuracy; not fluid specific; high signal to noise ratio; no pressure drop requirements; suitable for both turbulent and laminar liquid flow.
Disadvantages: Susceptible to process vibrations/pulsations/noise; sensitive to gas.

Turbine 

The energy required to spin the rotor of a turbine flowmeter becomes swamped by the drag from the system at low flow rates. As flow rate reduces and transitions from turbulent to laminar flow, the linearity changes and the measurements become less accurate. Pelton wheel turbines that use low friction, precision bearings can mitigate this effect to some degree and with careful design, are capable of flows down to 1-2ml/min. They are capable of fast response times and operate across wide flow and operating temperature ranges.
Design challenge: Straight-forward electronics vs complex precision engineering.
Advantages: Low cost; can be calibrated in-situ; good accuracy and repeatability with rapid response times.
Disadvantages: Susceptible to changes in fluid properties; requires sufficient pressure to move liquid through the pipeline at a rate that causes the turbine blades to spin.

Oval Gear 

Positive displacement flow meters, such as oval gear meters, are particularly effective for measuring low flow viscous fluids, although the resolution can be quite low. To obtain good resolution, the oval gear meters need to be small in low flow applications. Installing an oval gear meter in a horizontal position will reduce rotational friction and improve low-flow measurements. The lower the flow, the smaller the gear size, which are manufactured to tight tolerances with small internal clearances to minimise any fluid leakage around the gears.
Design challenge: Straight-forward electronics vs complex precision engineering. 
Advantages: Ideal for viscous liquids, precision chemical dosing; good reliability.
Disadvantages: Not suitable for low flow aqueous solutions as the slippage past the moving element is greater than the volume being measured. Trapped air can prevent small gears from rotating – ensure all gas is purged on initial startup. Low resolution.

Thermal

Thermal flow sensors, primarily used for monitoring gas flow, operate on the principle of monitoring thermal transfer using a reference temperature, a heat injection and a detector. The basic approach is that heat is added to the flowing stream and a temperature imbalance being used to obtain a flow rate. They are fluid-specific as the technology relies on the liquid’s thermal properties and are generally calibrated for the specific fluid properties.  
Design challenge: Relatively simple engineering vs complex electronics.
Advantages: Highly sensitive and able to measure flow rates down to nanolitres per minute; suitable for low pressure drop applications; not so reliant on the dynamics of the fluid to make a measurement.
Disadvantages: Fluid-specific. Thermal low-flow liquid flowmeters are non-linear over their temperature range and so require some correction during the process. Not suitable for low boiling point liquids or liquid mixtures with changing composition.

Coriolis 

The Coriolis is a mass flowmeter, i.e. measures mass flow directly and independently of the liquid’s properties. The Coriolis provides mass flow and density measurements that are both repeatable and highly accurate, even when the composition of the liquid is unknown or changing. Using the principle of accelerating a moving fluid and detecting the reaction on the vibrating tube with sensors, Coriolis meters are very sensitive and flows lower than 0.2 ml/min are possible.
Design challenge: Complex electronics and engineering. 
Advantages: Extensive material compatibility; can be used for either liquid or gas flow measurement; independent of liquid or process variables.
Disadvantages: The primary limitation is the flow must be single-phase and of low viscosity. They are also expensive devices so would not be suitable for low-cost low flow applications.

As flowmeters can be the most limiting component of a low flow fluidic system, it is essential to choose the most suitable high-precision flow sensor for an application. 

There are ap­plic­a­tions that push level meas­ure­ment to its lim­its. Un­til re­cently, this in­cluded a pro­cess called iron bri­quet­ting, where it was al­most im­possible to achieve re­li­able meas­ur­ing res­ults due to ex­treme tem­per­at­ures. That has changed. Now, the new high-tem­per­at­ure ver­sion of Vega Grieshaber's radar sensor VE­GAPULS 6X provides a ground­break­ing solu­tion for pro­cesses at tem­per­at­ures up to 450 °C.

Sponge iron is an in­ter­me­di­ate product in steel pro­duc­tion. To store or trans­port it eco­nom­ic­ally, it is of­ten pro­cessed in­to bri­quettes. The tech­nique in­volves passing the por­ous, spongy mass through heat-res­ist­ant roller presses at tem­per­at­ures of 400 °C and high­er.

New solu­tion for an old prob­lem

For many years, pre­cise level meas­ure­ment was the bot­tle­neck in this pro­cess. Con­ven­tion­al meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy was not able to func­tion re­li­ably un­der the harsh con­di­tions, be­cause in ad­di­tion to the heat, the low con­duct­iv­ity of iron also proved to be an im­ped­i­ment.

For chal­len­ging ap­plic­a­tions such as these, VEGA now of­fers the high-tem­per­at­ure ver­sion of its VE­GAPULS 6X radar sensor. Thanks to its hol­low ceram­ic cone and graph­ite seal, the sensor achieves a thermal per­form­ance that was pre­vi­ously not pos­sible. “It’s true that hot bri­quet­ting is a niche pro­cess,” ad­mits product man­ager Mar­vin Moser. However, there are count­less such ex­tremes and spe­cial cases for which re­li­able meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy is all the more im­port­ant. “Fail­ure is not an op­tion here,” he says, con­vinced that “if VE­GAPULS 6X can handle this, then it is suit­able for all such ex­treme cases.”

New per­form­ance class

In or­der to achieve sig­ni­fic­antly bet­ter per­form­ance un­der ex­tremely high tem­per­at­ures, VEGA pro­tects its radar sensors with a new type of sensor design.

The com­bin­a­tion of hol­low ceram­ic cone and graph­ite seal cre­ates ad­di­tion­al meas­ure­ment cer­tainty. By min­im­ising the mass to be pen­et­rated in the hol­low cone, the per­form­ance of the sensor is sig­ni­fic­antly en­hanced. The use of graph­ite as a seal­ing ma­ter­i­al also con­trib­utes greatly to the ro­bust­ness of the sensor. As a res­ult, it has a tem­per­at­ure res­ist­ance range from -196 °C to +450 °C and a pres­sure res­ist­ance range from -1 bar to +160 bar. Even large tem­per­at­ure fluc­tu­ations are not a prob­lem.

Made to fit

Be­sides be­ing highly res­ist­ant, VE­GAPULS 6X of­fers an­oth­er ma­jor ad­vant­age that is par­tic­u­larly use­ful for com­pact ves­sels. It can be used with a wide range of avail­able pro­cess fit­tings, com­pact threads and small flanges, and op­er­ates without a block­ing dis­tance i.e. dead band. Pro­cess ves­sels can thus be filled right up to the top edge with no prob­lem. Its high fre­quency of 80 GHz also en­ables par­tic­u­larly good fo­cus­sing of its meas­ur­ing beam, which in turn has a pos­it­ive ef­fect on meas­ure­ment in tanks with in­tern­al in­stall­a­tions and agit­at­ors. What is more, its high dy­nam­ic range makes it pos­sible to re­li­ably meas­ure me­dia that were pre­vi­ously con­sidered nearly im­possible to meas­ure due to their low dielec­tric con­stant. Are they com­pletely se­cure?

Up-to-date safety and se­cur­ity

Max­im­um sys­tem se­cur­ity is one of the most im­port­ant goals in the pro­cess in­dustry. To achieve this, VEGA has im­ple­men­ted a com­pre­hens­ive se­cur­ity concept with the VE­GAPULS 6X level sensor. At the top of the list is the sensor design it­self, which eas­ily with­stands ex­treme am­bi­ent con­di­tions. In ad­di­tion, the sensor cov­ers se­cur­ity and safety is­sues such as cy­ber­se­cur­ity, func­tion­al safety in ac­cord­ance with the Ma­chinery Dir­ect­ive and ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion, all the while com­ply­ing with the highest in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards and cur­rent dir­ect­ives. 
 

The de­tec­tion and mon­it­or­ing of flu­id prop­er­ties is re­quired in many OEM and pro­cess ap­plic­a­tions. Qual­ity de­grad­a­tion over time, con­cen­tra­tion meas­ure­ment, air/gas bubble de­tec­tion or the de­term­in­a­tion of the me­di­um it­self are just some of the tasks that today re­quire dif­fer­ent sensors to achieve the re­quired de­tec­tion. Now you can do it all with a single sensor with EBE flu­id qual­ity sensors. Suit­able for gases, li­quids, solids and even highly vis­cous me­dia, EBE's corTEC® sensors can be housed in spe­cial hy­gien­ic, ro­bust or mini­ature hous­ings. They provide ex­cel­lent de­tec­tion of me­dia prop­er­ties even without dir­ect con­tact with the me­di­um.

Sim­ul­tan­eous ac­quis­i­tion of ca­pa­cit­ive and con­duct­ive meas­ured val­ues

The QCRB sensors provide sim­ul­tan­eous, real-time meas­ure­ment of ca­pa­cit­ive and con­duct­ive quant­it­ies that pre­vi­ously re­quired the use of two or more in­stru­ments. They cov­er ca­pa­cit­ive meas­ure­ment ranges from 0.1pF to 80pF and en­able de­tec­tion of me­dia with a range of re­l­at­ive per­mit­tiv­it­ies (εr) from va­cu­um to wa­ter and bey­ond. In or­der to provide a com­pre­hens­ive ana­lys­is of the me­dia, an ex­ten­ded con­duct­iv­ity meas­ure­ment range is avail­able from typ. 0.1 to 200 mS/cm. In ad­di­tion, the sensors of­fer real-time cal­ib­ra­tion to com­pensate for en­vir­on­ment­al in­flu­ences. This en­sures high short and long term sta­bil­ity and re­peat­ab­il­ity. The sensors are ideal for mass pro­duc­tion, en­abling OEMs to of­fer high qual­ity ana­lys­is on a large scale in a cost-ef­fect­ive man­ner.

In­creas­ing ef­fi­ciency and qual­ity 

In in­dus­tri­al and med­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions, EBE flu­id qual­ity sensors help meet reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments, im­prove health and safety, and in­crease pro­duc­tion ef­fi­ciency through pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance and pro­cess op­tim­isa­tion. Par­tic­u­larly in in­dus­tries such as food and bever­age, phar­ma­ceut­ic­als and med­ic­al devices, where strict reg­u­la­tions ap­ply, sensor tech­no­logy provides valu­able real-time data, re­du­cing the need for fre­quent labor­at­ory test­ing and min­im­ising as­so­ci­ated costs. With corTEC® flu­id qual­ity sensors, EBE of­fers a cost-ef­fect­ive, uni­ver­sal solu­tion for soph­ist­ic­ated de­tec­tion and ana­lys­is of flu­id prop­er­ties in a wide range of in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions.
 

Build­ing on the suc­cess of the ac­claimed FLEXI-FLOW Com­pact series, Bronk­horst presents a com­pre­hens­ive line ex­ten­sion of­fer­ing un­par­alleled ver­sat­il­ity and pre­ci­sion in gas flow meas­ure­ment and con­trol. FLEXI-FLOW Com­pact sets a new stand­ard in com­pact­ness, func­tion­al­ity and ad­apt­ab­il­ity, serving a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions with pre­ci­sion and ef­fi­ciency.

In­teg­rated Eth­er­Net com­mu­nic­a­tion 

The latest it­er­a­tion of the FLEXI-FLOW Com­pact range in­tro­duces a num­ber of in­nov­at­ive mod­els and fea­tures, in­clud­ing in­stru­ments tailored for lower flow ranges from 0-5 mln/min. In ad­di­tion, the range now in­cludes down­por­ted in­stru­ments for ap­plic­a­tions where top-mount­ing is re­quired, and flow con­trol­lers with in­teg­ral shut-off valves to provide a high­er de­gree of leak tight­ness or emer­gency shut off. One of the key en­hance­ments to the FLEXI-FLOW Com­pact Series is the in­clu­sion of Eth­er­Net com­mu­nic­a­tion, provid­ing seam­less con­nectiv­ity and in­teg­ra­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies for mod­ern in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments.

The new mod­els, like the ori­gin­al FLEXI-FLOW Com­pact in­stru­ments, util­ise a unique through-chip sensor com­bined with proven by­pass tech­no­logy. These thermal mass flow meters and con­trol­lers of­fer ex­cep­tion­al per­form­ance and are 35% smal­ler than tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ments, mak­ing them the smal­lest on the mar­ket for flow ranges up to 20 ln/min.

Fast re­sponse for pre­cise con­trol

Ad­vanced sensor tech­no­logy en­sures not only stable flow con­trol, but also fast re­sponse times, with set­tling times of less than 150 ms, en­abling pre­cise con­trol even un­der dy­nam­ic pro­cess con­di­tions. In­teg­rated tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure sensors and an on-board gas data­base en­sure un­par­alleled ac­cur­acy over vary­ing pro­cess para­met­ers, mak­ing the in­stru­ments ad­apt­able to a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions. They also of­fer com­pre­hens­ive mon­it­or­ing and con­trol fea­tures, in­clud­ing in­teg­rated tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure sensors, a USB-C port for easy setup, op­tion­al Bluetooth com­mu­nic­a­tion for im­proved ac­cess­ib­il­ity, and NAMUR status in­dic­a­tion via col­oured LEDs and di­git­al out­put para­met­ers.

Wheth­er as pre-con­figured mod­els, built-to-or­der solu­tions or cus­tom­ised multi-chan­nel sys­tems, the FLEXI­FLOW Com­pact range of­fers un­ri­valled flex­ib­il­ity to meet spe­cif­ic ap­plic­a­tion re­quire­ments. With free and in­tu­it­ive soft­ware tools for con­fig­ur­a­tion, dia­gnostics and pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance, Bronk­horst en­sures seam­less in­teg­ra­tion and op­tim­al per­form­ance in vari­ous in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments.
 

The JUMO solu­tion is par­tic­u­larly user-friendly and ver­sat­ile, which means it can con­trib­ute to cost ef­fi­ciency in a wide range of in­dus­tries. JUMO's pro­cess tech­no­logy ap­plic­a­tion plays a cru­cial role in the food in­dustry, es­pe­cially in the brew­ing pro­cess. From mash­ing, lauter­ing, wort boil­ing, and cool­ing to fer­ment­a­tion and fil­tra­tion − all pro­cesses can be ef­fi­ciently con­trolled with the JUMO solu­tion.

The linch­pin of the solu­tion is the JUMO var­iT­RON auto­ma­tion sys­tem, which en­ables an end-to-end solu­tion from the sensor to the cloud through vari­ous JUMO smart­WARE ap­plic­a­tions. The fo­cus is on three user groups: man­u­fac­tur­ers of pro­cess tech­no­logy plants, plant op­er­at­ors, and end users.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers can use JUMO smart­WARE Setup to define in­di­vidu­al pro­cess steps and plant types. Plant op­er­at­ors be­ne­fit from the JUMO smart­WARE Pro­gram ap­plic­a­tion, which en­ables in­tu­it­ive cre­ation as well as edit­ing of pro­grams and re­cipes us­ing a graph­ic­al ed­it­or. With a few simple clicks, pre­defined pro­cess steps can be se­lec­ted, linked, and set­point val­ues ad­jus­ted.

Con­sist­ent op­er­a­tion and doc­u­ment­a­tion

The end user can then visu­al­ize and man­age the pro­gram se­quence us­ing a dis­play on such devices as a web pan­el or a tab­let. Here, the user in­ter­face as well as the graph­ic­al pro­gram ed­it­or can be cus­tom­ized to en­sure con­sist­ent and in­tu­it­ive op­er­a­tion. Oth­er JUMO ap­plic­a­tions such as JUMO smart­WARE SCADA and the JUMO Cloud can be used for mon­it­or­ing, batch re­cord­ing, and the cre­ation of in­di­vidu­al re­ports. JUMO smart­WARE SCADA runs loc­ally at the cus­tom­er's site and provides de­tailed pro­cess con­trol and mon­it­or­ing. The JUMO Cloud, on the oth­er hand, of­fers a com­pre­hens­ive care­free pack­age for cus­tom­ers and en­ables world­wide ac­cess to plant and batch data.

CIP (Clean­ing in Place) is an es­sen­tial part of the brew­ing pro­cess. CIP clean­ing is a pro­cess for clean­ing pro­cess plants in the food and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al in­dustry. The pro­cess con­sists of flush­ing the plants with clean­ing agents without hav­ing to dis­mantle them. JUMO of­fers a wide range of EHEDG-cer­ti­fied sensors to match. These are sensors suit­able for wet clean­ing in closed plants without pri­or dis­mount­ing. This cor­res­ponds to EHEDG Type EL Class I.
The CIP con­trol­ler runs on the JUMO var­iT­RON sys­tem and is fully in­teg­rated in­to the brew­ing plant's auto­ma­tion sys­tem. It sup­ports vari­ous CIP pro­cesses, such as single and dual-cir­cuit pro­cesses, and also en­ables SIP (Ster­il­iz­a­tion in Place)pro­cesses to be car­ried out. The pro­cess se­quence can be in­di­vidu­ally ad­ap­ted to the re­quire­ments of the plant and the product.

Pro­cess con­trol for ef­fi­cient and safe clean­ing

In most cases, the first step of CIP clean­ing is to pre-clean the plants with the last rinse wa­ter from the pre­vi­ous clean­ing. This as­sumes that a stor­age wa­ter tank is avail­able. The next step con­sists of rins­ing with hot wa­ter. It is usu­ally fol­lowed by a clean­ing step with caustic soda. After an­oth­er rinse with wa­ter, clean­ing is of­ten per­formed with nitric acid or even phos­phor­ic acid. If no fur­ther re­quire­ments need to be met, clean­ing is com­plete after an­oth­er rinse with wa­ter from the stor­age tank.

Dur­ing clean­ing the tem­per­at­ure, flow, con­cen­tra­tion of the clean­ing me­dia, and the dur­a­tion are the es­sen­tial factors for suc­cess.

The high­er the clean­ing tem­per­at­ure, the high­er the clean­ing suc­cess. On the oth­er hand, ex­cess­ive tem­per­at­ures can also cause dam­age to the plant.

An es­sen­tial as­pect of the CIP con­trol sys­tem is the mon­it­or­ing and reg­u­la­tion of clean­ing para­met­ers. For this pur­pose JUMO of­fers a wide range of sensors and con­trol­lers, which can be eas­ily in­teg­rated in­to the sys­tem. The meas­ure­ment data is ac­quired in real time and can be used for mon­it­or­ing and op­tim­iz­ing the pro­cess.

Batch re­cord­ing is es­sen­tial for doc­u­ment­ing CIP clean­ing as well as meet­ing qual­ity and hy­giene stand­ards. With JUMO smart­WARE SCADA and the JUMO Cloud, this task can be com­pleted quickly, eas­ily, and ef­fi­ciently, just as in the brew­ing pro­cess. Both sys­tems en­able de­tailed re­cord­ing of pro­cess para­met­ers and the cre­ation of in­di­vidu­al cus­tom­er re­ports.

The CIP con­trol sys­tem is op­er­ated via an in­tu­it­ive browser-based op­er­at­ing concept that is tailored to the user. Here, the op­er­at­or can visu­ally fol­low the pro­cess se­quence and in­ter­vene manu­ally if ne­ces­sary. The sys­tem of­fers a high de­gree of flex­ib­il­ity and en­ables even com­plex CIP pro­cesses to be con­trolled ef­fi­ciently and safely.

An­oth­er ad­vant­age of the JUMO solu­tion is its in­teg­ra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing plants and sys­tems. Thanks to its open ar­chi­tec­ture and sup­port for stand­ard in­ter­faces, the JUMO var­iT­RON sys­tem can be eas­ily in­teg­rated in­to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­tures. This opens up a wide range of op­por­tun­it­ies for plant mod­ern­iz­a­tion and pro­cess op­tim­iz­a­tion.

In sum­mary, with the var­iT­RON 500 and the JUMO smart­WARE Pro­gram JUMO has cre­ated a com­pre­hens­ive and in­tu­it­ive auto­ma­tion solu­tion that can be used in many in­dus­tri­al sec­tors, es­pe­cially in the brew­ing in­dustry. The solu­tion not only of­fers the pos­sib­il­ity of ef­fi­ciently and pre­cisely con­trolling the vari­ous pro­cess steps in beer pro­duc­tion, but also en­ables com­pre­hens­ive mon­it­or­ing, batch re­cord­ing, and the cre­ation of in­di­vidu­al re­ports.

Seam­less con­nec­tion to the cloud

This task is per­fectly ful­filled with JUMO smart­WARE SCADA and JUMO Cloud. With these solu­tions JUMO has de­veloped two out­stand­ing products that are ideal not only for mon­it­or­ing com­plex pro­cess tech­no­logy pro­cesses, but also for con­trolling them. JUMO smart­WARE SCADA of­fers the op­tion of loc­al mon­it­or­ing and con­trol of the pro­cesses, while JUMO Cloud acts as a com­pre­hens­ive care­free pack­age and en­ables seam­less con­nec­tion between the sensor and cloud world­wide without a VPN.

The CIP clean­ing pro­cess is cru­cial to the brew­ing in­dustry. JUMO sup­ports this with EHEDG-cer­ti­fied sensors and in­tu­it­ive, user-friendly con­trol soft­ware. Qual­ity and food safety are sus­tain­ably en­sured by the CIP pro­cess. Para­met­er­iz­a­tion of the clean­ing me­dia, the tem­per­at­ure, flow rates, and the clean­ing dur­a­tion are es­sen­tial factors for the clean­ing suc­cess and can be pre­cisely con­trolled via the pre­vi­ously men­tioned JUMO sys­tems.

Solu­tions offered by JUMO provide max­im­um flex­ib­il­ity, a high de­gree of pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity, and the abil­ity to meet cus­tom­er re­quire­ments thanks to mod­u­lar hard­ware and PLC func­tions. The browser-based ap­plic­a­tions are in­tu­it­ive to use and can be cus­tom­ized. In sum­mary, JUMO of­fers a com­plete and ad­apt­able ap­proach for any­one look­ing for ef­fi­cient, re­li­able, and user-friendly auto­ma­tion solu­tions.

Au­thors: Mi­chael Wien­er (Product Man­ager for Auto­ma­tion Sys­tems, JUMO) and Nico Müller (Product Man­ager for Soft­ware, JUMO)
 

PCN Europe: Why is the com­pressed air con­sump­tion so high in many large fil­ter sys­tems?
Brandis: It is be­cause the con­trol­lers of the sys­tems are of­ten ob­sol­ete. They re­lease the com­pressed air blast for the fil­ter clean­ing in defined time in­ter­vals and with con­stant air pres­sure - re­gard­less of the ac­tu­al de­gree of fil­ter con­tam­in­a­tion. The in­ter­vals of the air blasts are of­ten too short. This needs more com­pressed air than is ac­tu­ally ne­ces­sary.

PCN Europe: What does that mean for the plant op­er­at­ors?
Brandis: They have re­l­at­ively high op­er­at­ing costs be­cause com­pressed air is quite ex­pens­ive. But this is not the only dis­ad­vant­age.

PCN Europe: What oth­er prob­lems may oc­cur from time con­trolled clean­ing?
Brandis: The high num­ber of com­pressed air blasts re­duces the ser­vice life of the fil­ter hoses. The clean­ing pres­sure is im­port­ant too. You must know that each com­pressed air blast par­tially ex­pands the fil­ter fab­ric. Many com­pressed air blasts mean that the fil­ter me­di­um must be re­newed more of­ten be­cause of the high wear. This also leads to high­er costs for the plant op­er­at­ors. And then there is pre­coat­ing.

PCN Europe: What ex­actly is that?
Brandis: A pre­coat­ing is an aux­il­i­ary lay­er, e.g. of lime or potash, which is ap­plied to the fil­ter fab­ric to in­flu­ence the fil­ter ef­fect. Even finest gas particles de­pos­it on this lay­er, that would nor­mally pass an un­pre­coated fil­ter. If the fil­ter is cleaned too of­ten or too strong, the pre­coat­ing can de­tach from the fab­ric more eas­ily and the fil­ter per­form­ance is sig­ni­fic­antly re­duced. Then the pre­coat­ing has to be re­newed, which is ex­pens­ive.

PCN Europe: Your com­pany has now de­veloped a solu­tion that reg­u­lates the clean­ing pres­sure de­pend­ing on the fil­ter con­tam­in­a­tion. Is that go­ing to re­duce the com­pressed air con­sump­tion of large fil­ter sys­tems?
Brandis: Yes, sig­ni­fic­antly. With the new pre-pres­sure con­trol of our mas­ter solen­oid valve con­trol­ler HE 5750, the valves only re­lease as much com­pressed air as is ac­tu­ally re­quired for fil­ter clean­ing. The clean­ing pres­sure can either be set dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure con­trolled or volume flow con­trolled. The re­ques­ted nom­in­al clean­ing pres­sures for the dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure or for the volume flow are de­term­ined in a ta­ble. Let´s say for ex­ample: “At a dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure of 50%, I would like to have a clean­ing pres­sure of 3 bar.” If the clean­ing pres­sure in the fil­ter sys­tem falls be­low 3 bar after a clean­ing pro­cess, the HE 5750 opens the cent­ral shut-off valve. Com­pressed air is then re­filled in­to the sys­tem, un­til the de­sired clean­ing pres­sure is reached again.

PCN Europe: How ex­actly does pres­sure reg­u­la­tion via a cent­ral shut-off valve work?
Brandis: If the clean­ing pres­sure ex­ceeds the pre­vi­ously set value, the HE 5750 ac­tiv­ates the shut-off valve, which is then closed. Once the shut-off valve is closed, com­pressed air can no longer flow in­to the pres­sure tanks that feed the clean­ing valves. The pres­sure tanks are there­fore filled up to the re­spect­ive cal­cu­lated clean­ing pres­sure. The pres­sure is re­leased in­dir­ectly via the valves only, i.e. dur­ing the clean­ing pro­cess.

PCN Europe: Are there any find­ings on how much the op­er­at­ing costs of large fil­ter sys­tems can be re­duced by us­ing pre-pres­sure con­trol?
Brandis: Yes, there are in­deed: we have cal­cu­lated that for a me­di­um-sized fil­ter plant with a com­pressed air con­sump­tion of ap­prox. 130.000 m³ and com­pressed air costs of ap­prox. 16.000 euros per year, 3.500 euros can be saved per year us­ing the pre-pres­sure con­trol. Con­sid­er­ing that the fil­ters have to be re­placed less fre­quently be­cause of the lower clean­ing pres­sure, that will make an­oth­er 5000 euros of sav­ings per re­place­ment peri­od (see info box). Well-known cus­tom­ers have been con­vinced by this ef­fi­ciency and re­li­ab­il­ity: our HE 5750 is in use e.g. in Dubai, in one of the largest en­ergy from waste plants world­wide. Also the Basin Elec­tric Dry Fork car­bon power plant in Gil­lette/Wyom­ing (USA) uses our con­trol­ler for many years. It is the world´s largest plant with a cir­cu­lat­ing flu­id­ised bed dry des­ul­phur­isa­tion.

Sav­ing po­ten­tial

Wern­er Brandis, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of AXXER­ON HESCH elec­tron­ics GmbH, has cal­cu­lated the sav­ing of com­pressed air by pre-pres­sure con­trol. “Let´s take for ex­ample a me­di­um-sized fil­ter sys­tem with 96 valves, a typ­ic­al com­pressed air con­sump­tion of 0.05 m3 per valve open­ing and 2.628.000 valve open­ings per year. That will make a com­pressed air con­sump­tion of 131.400 m3 per year dur­ing a 24/7 per­man­ent op­er­a­tion. With a me­di­um com­pressed air price of 12 cents per cu­bic metre, that will make 15.768 euros of an­nu­al costs.

As­sum­ing that the me­di­um pres­sure in the tanks is re­duced by 1 bar us­ing pre-pres­sure con­trol, that will make a de­crease of air con­sump­tion and thus of com­pressed air costs of 22 per­cent. For our ex­ample that will be an an­nu­al sav­ing of 3500 euros. Since the fil­ter ele­ments must be re­placed less fre­quently thanks to the lower clean­ing pres­sure, there are an­oth­er 4.800 euros of sav­ings per re­place­ment peri­od.”
 

ABB's MV Ti­tani­um concept in­trodudes a me­di­um voltage (MV) vari­able speed in­dus­tri­al mo­tor in the 1 to 5 mega­watt (MW) range that com­bines con­nectiv­ity and con­trol fea­tures in an easy to spe­cify and in­stall pack­age. The all-in-one concept brings the be­ne­fits of en­ergy ef­fi­ciency to MV mo­tor-driv­en pro­cesses, which today ac­count for 10% of the world's elec­tri­city. 

“En­ergy ef­fi­ciency meas­ures of speed-con­trolled mo­tors have gained sig­ni­fic­ant trac­tion in small size mo­tors, for low voltage ap­plic­a­tions. But large mo­tors have so far been left be­hind, due to ini­tial cost and com­plex­ity, with only 10-15 per­cent cur­rently con­nec­ted to a drive,” says Heikki Vepsäläinen, Pres­id­ent of ABB Large Mo­tors and Gen­er­at­ors. “But that is set to change with our new MV Ti­tani­um concept that makes it cost-ef­fect­ive and straight­for­ward to in­stall a suit­able matched mo­tor, with in­creased con­trol, mon­it­or­ing, and con­nectiv­ity in a single pack­age. It is the right up­grade solu­tion for ex­ist­ing dir­ect-on-line mo­tors. And the po­ten­tial sav­ings in en­ergy costs and CO₂ emis­sions are huge – if we ret­ro­fit­ted the en­tire in­stalled base, it would be like tak­ing just over 1000 coal-fired power sta­tions off­line.” 

Com­pact foot­print for in­teg­ra­tion in ex­ist­ing in­stall­a­tions

In this pur­suit, ABB has de­veloped the MV Ti­tani­um concept to ad­dress the main per­ceived obstacles re­lated to in­stalling a drive with a large mo­tor. These in­clude not only the ini­tial cost of a sep­ar­ate drive, but also its as­so­ci­ated elec­tric­al house (e-house), trans­formers, switchgear and cabling that mul­tiply the cap­it­al cost and in­crease the com­plex­ity of in­stall­a­tion, es­pe­cially on ex­ist­ing sites where space is at a premi­um. In ad­di­tion to these sav­ings, it will also provide OPEX sav­ings due to the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency it will provide.

The next-gen­er­a­tion concept has been built on ABB’s 140 years of mo­tor design and 50 years of drives tech­no­logy ex­per­i­ence to cre­ate a solu­tion that in­teg­rates en­ergy ef­fi­ciency, con­trol­lab­il­ity, and con­nectiv­ity in­to a single pack­age. Fur­ther­more, it has in­tel­li­gence built in, with ana­lyt­ic­al and con­nectiv­ity cap­ab­il­it­ies so it can seam­lessly in­teg­rate in­to ex­ist­ing sys­tems, as well as provid­ing soft­ware lib­rar­ies and in­ter­faces for pro­cess mon­it­or­ing and op­tim­iz­a­tion.

The MV Ti­tani­um mo­tors are in­ten­ded for use with pumps, com­pressors, and fans as typ­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions, where they could re­duce en­ergy con­sump­tion by up to 40 per­cent as well as en­han­cing pro­ductiv­ity and min­im­iz­ing down­time. They will be used across a wide range of sec­tors in­clud­ing power and re­new­ables, pro­cessing, min­ing, ce­ment, and wa­ter. Heikki Vepsäläinen con­cludes: “Bey­ond its tech­nic­al pro­gress, this next-gen­er­a­tion mo­tor concept rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant step to­wards pro­ductiv­ity in a low car­bon world. It puts ABB well on the road to sup­port chan­ging large, fixed speed mo­tors to fully elec­tric­ally con­trolled mo­tors, one by one.” 
 

Tra­di­tion­al cool­ing tower sys­tems con­sist of a series of com­pon­ents such as a mo­tor, drive, coup­ling, shaft, and gear­box. These sys­tems can en­counter prob­lems over time, such as wear and vi­bra­tion, lead­ing to mal­func­tions, in­creased main­ten­ance re­quire­ments, and de­creased en­ergy ef­fi­ciency. A break­down of any com­pon­ent used in the cool­ing tower can lead to the tower be­ing out of ser­vice, which can halt pro­duc­tion.

The cool­ing tower of AS­SAN Alu­min­um, one of the lead­ing com­pan­ies in its sec­tor, is equipped with the 3KMF18 mod­el and MF18-1.200 fill type. This design fea­tures a ca­pa­city of 12,000,000 Kc­al/h, a wa­ter flow rate of 1,200 m³/h, a wa­ter in­let tem­per­at­ure of 40°C, and a wa­ter out­let tem­per­at­ure of 30°C. However, the in­ef­fi­ciency and lack of dur­ab­il­ity of the ex­ist­ing sys­tem's mo­tor and drive com­pon­ents (gear­box, coup­ling, shaft) due to their tra­di­tion­al struc­ture were a prob­lem.

To in­crease the ef­fi­ciency of AS­SAN Alu­min­um's cool­ing tower and en­sure long-term sus­tain­ab­il­ity, the com­pany col­lab­or­ated with EMF Mo­tor. With the in­tro­duc­tion of EMF Mo­tor, all com­pon­ents that could cause mal­func­tions were elim­in­ated, and only the dir­ect-drive EMF Mo­tor was used in­stead.

25% re­duc­tion in elec­tri­city con­sump­tion

Ad­di­tion­ally, the sys­tem be­came quieter, vi­bra­tion levels were re­duced, and with min­im­al grease re­plen­ish­ment, the an­nu­al main­ten­ance re­quire­ment be­came much sim­pler. This col­lab­or­a­tion was a sig­ni­fic­ant step in terms of both tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tion and op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency. It in­creased the per­form­ance of cool­ing towers while re­du­cing op­er­at­ing costs and en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact. Such in­nov­a­tions have in­creased the com­pet­it­ive­ness of in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­it­ies and cre­ated a more sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el.
This ground­break­ing work in the field of in­dus­tri­al cool­ing is a joint project of EMF Mo­tor and Cenk In­dus­tri­al Plants Man­u­fac­tur­ing.

With the in­tro­duc­tion of the in­nov­at­ive di­git­al twin plat­form and di­git­al name­plates, R. STAHL, an ex­pert in ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion, is mark­ing a new mile­stone in the pro­cess in­dustry. This ground­break­ing tech­no­logy makes it pos­sible to ef­fi­ciently man­age and in­ter­act­ively use di­git­al twins of ac­tu­al sys­tem com­pon­ents, which of­fers ma­jor be­ne­fits for op­er­at­ors, plan­ners and man­u­fac­tur­ers of pro­cess sys­tems.

Op­tim­isa­tions for op­er­a­tion and main­en­ance

The di­git­al name­plate is a tech­nic­ally more ad­vanced ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al rat­ing plate. One of its func­tions is to provide all of the in­form­a­tion and mark­ings re­quired for safe use and main­ten­ance of products in di­git­al form. This in­form­a­tion can be ac­cessed from any­where in the world, at any time, thanks to QR codes or RFID tags ac­cord­ing to IEC 61406 which are ap­plied to the products. By en­sur­ing that the rel­ev­ant data and doc­u­ment­a­tion is avail­able at all times, this forms the basis for op­tim­ising main­ten­ance work and op­er­a­tions man­age­ment as a whole. This makes it far easi­er to ad­here to safety and com­pli­ance reg­u­la­tions.

R. STAHL is one of the glob­al pi­on­eers to have suc­cess­fully im­ple­men­ted sub­mod­els such as the di­git­al name­plate, tech­nic­al data, han­dover doc­u­ment­a­tion and con­tact in­form­a­tion ac­cord­ing to the strict spe­cific­a­tions of the IDTA (In­dus­tri­al Di­git­al Twin As­so­ci­ation). "We're very pleased that R. STAHL is one of the first sup­pli­ers to fully im­ple­ment the IDTA sub­mod­els for types and in­stances when us­ing the di­git­al twin in prac­tice," ex­plains Meik Bill­mann, Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or of the IDTA. "The com­bin­a­tion of di­git­al name­plates and di­git­al twins rep­res­ents a mile­stone for ef­fi­cient sys­tem op­er­a­tion and the in­ter­op­er­able use of data in the pro­cess in­dustry," high­lights Björn Höper, Head of Work­ing Group 1.4 "As­set Ad­min­is­tra­tion Shell" in the NAMUR user as­so­ci­ation.

R. STAHL presents six real ap­plic­a­tions which clearly demon­strate how the di­git­al plat­form can be ef­fect­ively used to op­er­ate pro­cess sys­tems more ef­fi­ciently and safely. The solu­tions range from the pro­vi­sion of doc­u­ments and auto­mat­ic no­ti­fic­a­tion of firm­ware up­dates, through to im­proved main­ten­ance pro­cesses.

Seam­less in­teg­ra­tion and in­ter­ac­tion with di­git­al twins

"With the launch of the di­git­al twin plat­form and di­git­al name­plates, we are set­ting a new stand­ard which not only in­creases safety and ef­fi­ciency when op­er­at­ing pro­cess sys­tems, but also plays a key part in the di­git­al trans­form­a­tion of the in­dustry," ex­plains Ro­land Dunker, Head of Di­git­al Ser­vices at R. STAHL. "Our plat­form en­ables seam­less in­teg­ra­tion and in­ter­ac­tion with di­git­al twins, mean­ing that our cus­tom­ers can achieve huge cost sav­ings and im­prove­ments, from plan­ning a sys­tem, op­er­at­ing it and then re­cyc­ling af­ter­wards.”

R. STAHL's di­git­al twin plat­form of­fers sup­port for ef­fect­ively im­ple­ment­ing con­cepts re­lat­ing to the in­dus­tri­al In­ter­net of Things and op­tim­ising pro­cesses throughout a sys­tem's en­tire life cycle. From plan­ning, com­mis­sion­ing, on­go­ing op­er­a­tions, right through to de­com­mis­sion­ing, all of the rel­ev­ant data is avail­able dir­ectly and is in­ter­op­er­able. This not only helps with pre­cise main­ten­ance and fast troubleshoot­ing, but also pro­motes sus­tain­able op­er­at­ing prac­tices. Plan­ning costs, re­quire­ments for up­dat­ing data, and down­times are min­im­ised and the en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact is re­duced.

The basis for the di­git­al product pass­port ac­cord­ing to the EU Reg­u­la­tion

The com­bin­a­tion of di­git­al name­plates and the di­git­al twin plat­form based on as­set ad­min­is­tra­tion shells from R. STAHL also ad­dresses an­oth­er com­pli­ance is­sue: Ac­cord­ing to the ES­PR (Eco­design for Sus­tain­able Products Reg­u­la­tion) of the European Uni­on, it is ex­pec­ted that a di­git­al product pass­port (DPP) will be man­dat­ory for products from 2026 on­wards. This meas­ure aims to provide in­form­a­tion about products with re­gard to their ori­gin, com­pos­i­tion, use and re­cyc­ling in di­git­al form so that they are sus­tain­able and re­cyc­lable. This is made pos­sible by the solu­tion based on di­git­al name­plates (ac­cord­ing to IEC 61406) and as­set ad­min­is­tra­tion shells on the di­git­al twin plat­form. Ro­land Dunker is con­fid­ent that "with the new di­git­al twin plat­form, this is an­oth­er area where R. STAHL is tak­ing on a lead­ing role in the sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion of the in­dustry.”
 

The PPWR stip­u­lates that by 2030 all pack­aging that is brought in­to cir­cu­la­tion on the European do­mest­ic mar­ket needs to be re­cyc­lable, in­clud­ing pa­per and plastic. This urges pack­aging man­u­fac­tur­ers to re-eval­u­ate com­monly used ma­ter­i­als. Take pack­aging film, for in­stance: as tra­di­tion­al com­pos­ite ma­ter­i­als do not lend them­selves to ef­fi­cient re­cyc­ling, com­ply­ing with PPWR reg­u­la­tions means chan­ging the base ma­ter­i­al al­to­geth­er. Bar­ri­er pa­per and mono­ma­ter­i­als, i. e. films made of a single ma­ter­i­al like poly­ol­efin, have es­tab­lished them­selves as vi­able op­tions and are be­ing used across in­dus­tries, e. g. for snack bar flow wrap­ping.

Test­ing the ma­ter­i­als

These nov­el ma­ter­i­als of­ten call for ad­ap­ted pro­cesses: pa­per is more sus­cept­ible to tear­ing than film, and mono­ma­ter­i­als prove to be more chal­len­ging dur­ing seal­ing. Es­pe­cially brand own­ers in the food in­dustry there­fore need to ret­ro­fit ex­ist­ing pack­aging lines or in­vest in­to new solu­tions to main­tain pack­aging qual­ity, and ul­ti­mately con­sumer safety. When it comes to pa­per pack­aging, spe­cial form­ing shoulders and lower seal­ing tem­per­at­ures can con­trib­ute to pack­aging in­teg­rity. Mono­ma­ter­i­als, in turn, might re­quire ad­di­tion­al treat­ment that sup­ports seal­ab­il­ity, which plays a ma­jor role in pre­vent­ing con­tam­in­a­tion and pre­serving food fresh­ness. 

Neither brand own­ers nor pack­aging man­u­fac­tur­ers need to ad­dress these chal­lenges on their own. From de­vel­op­ing al­tern­at­ive ma­ter­i­als to up­grad­ing sys­tems or choos­ing new solu­tions al­to­geth­er, equip­ment pro­viders like Syn­t­e­gon have in­ves­ted in the de­vel­op­ment of equip­ment solu­tions for pro­cessing re­cyc­lable mono­plastics and pa­per at an early stage. As a res­ult, these pro­viders have sev­er­al levers at their dis­pos­al to ef­fect­ively sup­port food in­dustry play­ers.

Ad­apt­ing the equip­ment

The trans­ition to­wards PPWR-com­pli­ant pack­aging can take place on dif­fer­ent levels. Some­times the ex­pert­ise and ad­vice of a field ser­vice tech­ni­cian might suf­fice to help pro­du­cers in­teg­rate nov­el ma­ter­i­als. More of­ten, however, the right tool­ing and new parts are re­quired to avoid com­prom­ising on pro­cess ef­fi­ciency and pack­aging qual­ity. Well-versed tech­no­logy pro­viders help by provid­ing test­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies on pro­duc­tion equip­ment. With equip­ment ex­perts and the right tool sets at hand, brand own­ers can de­term­ine the suit­ab­il­ity of pack­aging ma­ter­i­als and the best ma­chine con­fig­ur­a­tion – without los­ing pre­cious pro­duc­tion time. 

Spe­cially de­veloped tools such as in­nov­at­ive pa­per form­ing sets, for in­stance, al­low to run cold seal pa­per for bars and tab­lets at the same speed as lam­in­ates on new and ex­ist­ing ma­chines. Like­wise, form­ing shoulders and seal­ing tools fa­cil­it­ate the pro­cessing of pa­per-based flex­ibles on ver­tic­al pack­aging lines. Mono­ma­ter­i­als, in turn, of­ten re­quire spe­cif­ic seal­ing sys­tems. State-of-the-art solu­tions for ver­tic­al bag­gers can cool and heat ma­ter­i­als at the same time, al­low­ing sens­it­ive mono-PE flex­ibles as thin as 20 µm to be pro­cessed gently.

Re­think­ing pack­aging design

The PPRW goal of sig­ni­fic­antly re­du­cing waste re­quires ad­just­ments to pack­aging design that can af­fect the equip­ment as well. Pack­aging re­duc­tions are a vivid ex­ample: while large, eye-catch­ing formats were om­ni­present on su­per­mar­ket shelves for a long time, today the fo­cus is on re­duced sizes and, above all, smal­ler head spaces. 

Mar­ket-lead­ing com­pan­ies provide tech­no­lo­gies such as air ex­pellers for head­space re­duc­tion or slim­mer seal­ing devices and test them on the food man­u­fac­tur­ers' ex­ist­ing sys­tems. Pack­aging sec­tions that are not filled can be re­duced in size, res­ult­ing in less pack­aging ma­ter­i­al for primary and sec­ond­ary pack­aging and re­duced weight. This not only has pos­it­ive ef­fects on trans­port and lo­gist­ics. It also saves CO₂ emis­sions and costs at the same time.

No mat­ter what de­cisions pack­aging ma­ter­i­al man­u­fac­tur­ers and brand own­ers take: choos­ing between pa­per or plastic – or oth­er spe­cial­ized pack­aging – re­mains a largely fact-based de­cision fo­cus­ing on eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions. Cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods in the form of life cycle ana­lyses (LCA) can help com­pare man­u­fac­tur­ing scen­ari­os on pro­duc­tion ma­chines or ana­lyze the CO₂ foot­print of each pack­aging ma­ter­i­al. This hol­ist­ic ap­proach to pack­aging helps brand own­ers re­con­cile eco­lo­gic­al and eco­nom­ic re­quire­ments, provid­ing a clear view of the en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact of pack­aging ma­ter­i­als and pro­cesses – for a more sus­tain­able fu­ture.

Au­thor: Tor­sten Sauer, Dir­ect­or Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Syn­t­e­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH