By David Vink, European Plastics News
Duesseldorf, Germany -- KraussMaffei AG presented its Blue Power awards for energy savings 28 Oct at K 2010 in Duesseldorf.
In reaction technology, the award was presented to Bötzingen, Germany-based automotive exterior and interior parts molder Peguform GmbH by Wolfgang Nendel, of Chemnitz technical university's plastic technologies and machinery construction department.
The jury had been impressed by the 300 000 kWh/year of energy saving, reduced logistics and footprint achieved at Peguform through use of a complete inline process for polyurethane production, injection moulding and robotic application of polyurethane sealant to the mouldings.
In his introduction to the awards, KraussMaffei ceo Dietmar Straub said that there had been six nominations made, from which the jury had awarded one award for each of the categories injection moulding, reaction technology and extrusion, representing the three types of machinery produced by the company.
The honorary president of the GKV association of German plastics processors, Reinhard Proske, presented the injection moulding category award to Armin Henning, production manager at molder Gerresheimer Group for the company having achieved 900 000 kWh per year of energy savings in the use of 15 all-electric injection molding machines.
The award also took into account simultaneous introduction by Duesseldorf-based Gerresheimer of combined heat and power (CHP) generation that had alone cut energy consumption by 25 percent. Proske stressed however that CHP only pays off beyond a certain minimum heat and power needs.
Proske said that, aside from energy saving, Gerresheimer has also saved 20 metric tonnes/year in carbon dioxide emissions in several locations by recovering heat from compressed air systems. To put this in perspective, Proske pointed out that 40 000 tonnes/year of carbon dioxide emissions could be potentially saved in Germany should this type of measure be applied to all of the country's 2000 plastic processing plants.
The holder of the plastic machinery chair at Duisberg-Essen university, Johannes Wortberg, presented the extrusion category award to Bad Hall, Austria-based pipe producer Agru Kunststofftechnik GmbH, a private company owned and run by the Gruber family.
With pipe extrusion accounting for the largest throughput of plastic material, Agru Kunststofftechnik has eliminated around 600 annual downtime periods through use of the KraussMaffei QuickSwitch system that enables pipe dimensions to be varied without interruption to production, Wortberg stated.
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