Pa­per pack­aging of­fers a num­ber of ad­vant­ages over its plastic coun­ter­parts: It has a high re­cyc­ling rate, lower CO₂ emis­sions, and lower dis­pos­al costs. However, it can­not yet be sealed without ad­hes­ives or lay­ers of plastic, a dis­ad­vant­age for man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­cyc­ling pro­cesses. In the PAP­URE project, four Fraunhofer in­sti­tutes are de­vel­op­ing a laser-based pro­cess that en­ables com­pletely ad­hes­ive-free pa­per pack­aging.

Since plastic pack­aging ac­counts for a large frac­tion of plastic waste, the de­mand for en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly pack­aging op­tions is in­creas­ing. One ma­ter­i­al that is be­com­ing more and more pop­u­lar as a sus­tain­able al­tern­at­ive to plastic is pa­per. However, the prob­lem is that seal­ing pa­per pack­aging re­quires ad­dit­ives such as ad­hes­ives or plastic. These ad­dit­ives con­tam­in­ate the pa­per, com­plic­ate the re­cyc­ling pro­cess, and re­duce the qual­ity of the re­cycled ma­ter­i­al. This poses a sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenge to the oth­er­wise es­tab­lished and ef­fi­cient pa­per re­cyc­ling pro­cess. In the PAP­URE project, the Fraunhofer in­sti­tutes for Ap­plied Poly­mer Re­search IAP, for Ma­ter­i­al and Beam Tech­no­logy IWS, for Pro­cess En­gin­eer­ing and Pack­aging IVV and for Ma­chine Tools and Form­ing Tech­no­logy IWU are look­ing to im­prove re­cyc­lab­il­ity by seal­ing pa­per pack­aging without any ad­dit­ives. The in­sti­tutes are pool­ing their ex­pert­ise to de­vel­op a seal­ing pro­cess us­ing laser treat­ment to modi­fy the pa­per so that it can then be sealed dir­ectly with a heat-seal­ing pro­cess. The project fo­cuses on ana­lyz­ing vari­ous pa­pers and char­ac­ter­iz­ing ma­ter­i­als (Fraunhofer IAP), laser-based sur­face modi­fic­a­tion (Fraunhofer IWS), de­vel­op­ing an in­nov­at­ive seal­ing sys­tem (Fraunhofer IVV), and es­tab­lish­ing an in­dustry-ori­ented demon­strat­or (Fraunhofer IWU). A labor­at­ory-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing unit is be­ing built at Fraunhofer IWU in Dresden that rep­lic­ates the pro­cess for man­u­fac­tur­ing a typ­ic­al pack­aging ma­ter­i­al.

Pa­per com­pos­i­tion af­fects ad­hes­ive prop­er­ties

In the first step, Fraunhofer IAP re­search­ers are char­ac­ter­iz­ing coated and un­coated pa­pers for pack­aging ap­plic­a­tions as well as print­er pa­pers and card­board to de­term­ine wheth­er they are suit­able for seal­ing without the ap­plic­a­tion of fur­ther ad­dit­ives. Roughly three dozen types of pa­per are avail­able for se­lec­tion. Spe­cial at­ten­tion is giv­en to de­term­in­ing the hemi­cel­lu­lose, cel­lu­lose, and lignin con­tent of the pa­per. These have a sig­ni­fic­ant ef­fect on the ad­hes­ive prop­er­ties of the ma­ter­i­als and the quant­ity and com­pos­i­tion of the res­ult­ing cleav­age products (re­ac­tion products from laser treat­ment). Ana­lyt­ic­al meth­ods such as scan­ning elec­tron mi­cro­scopy (SEM), high-per­form­ance an­ion ex­change chro­ma­to­graphy (HPAE) and X-ray pho­to­elec­tron spec­tro­scopy (XPS) are used to ana­lyze the chem­ic­al com­pos­i­tion and mor­pho­logy of the dif­fer­ent pa­pers be­fore laser treat­ment and of the sub­sequent re­ac­tion products. 

The re­search­ers were able to show that thick­er stand­ard pa­pers avail­able on the mar­ket and used for pro­du­cing items such as dis­pos­able pa­per cups and oth­er food pack­aging can be used for the seal­ing pro­cess.

Func­tion­al­iz­ing pa­per with CO lasers

In the next step, Fraunhofer IWS re­search­ers ir­ra­di­ate the sur­face of the pa­per with a car­bon monox­ide laser (CO laser), which rap­idly heats the pa­per, con­vert­ing its primary com­pon­ents – lignin, hemi­cel­lu­lose, and cel­lu­lose – in­to short-chain com­pounds in a con­trolled pro­cess. This in­nov­at­ive pro­cess step is what en­ables ad­hes­ive-free seal­ing of the pa­per. After ir­ra­di­ation, fus­ible cleav­age products re­main on the pa­per sur­face and seal un­der heat and pres­sure without any ad­di­tion­al ma­ter­i­al. “By ir­ra­di­at­ing the pa­per with a CO laser, we cre­ate re­fus­ible, sug­ar-like re­ac­tion products that we use in­stead of the syn­thet­ic ma­ter­i­als or ad­hes­ives that would oth­er­wise be re­quired to seal the pa­per by the heat seal­ing pro­cess. In this way, we are es­sen­tially pro­du­cing our own ad­hes­ive in the form of the cleav­age products,” says Volk­er Franke, Group Man­ager Laser Mi­cro Pro­cessing at Fraunhofer IWS in Dresden. “After laser treat­ment, we have suc­ceeded in us­ing heat seal­ing, an es­tab­lished thermal con­tact pro­cess, to bond two lay­ers of pa­per with heat and pres­sure.”

Bond strength defines seam qual­ity

The project part­ners at Fraunhofer IVV are de­vel­op­ing the ne­ces­sary seal­ing sys­tem for pro­cessing laser-treated pa­pers with fus­ible cleav­age products. To achieve this, the re­search­ers are ac­count­ing for the ef­fects of ma­ter­i­al prop­er­ties, laser para­met­ers and the prop­er­ties of the fus­ible re­ac­tion products on bond strength based on data already re­cor­ded by the teams at Fraunhofer IAP and Fraunhofer IWS. They are also test­ing the ex­tent to which bond strength and leak-tight­ness can be im­proved by us­ing suit­able seal­ing para­met­ers and tool geo­met­ries and are trans­fer­ring the res­ults to a pack­aging solu­tion with the goal of achiev­ing seam prop­er­ties suit­able for the mar­ket. “Bond strength de­term­ines how dif­fi­cult it is to tear open or to open pack­aging,” ex­plains Fa­bi­an Kay­atz, re­search sci­ent­ist and project co­ordin­at­or at Fraunhofer IVV in Dresden. “By meas­ur­ing mech­an­ic­al sta­bil­ity un­der dif­fer­ent types of loads (shear test, T-peel test), we can demon­strate the ef­fects of laser para­met­ers and seal­ing para­met­ers on the bond strength of the seams. Cru­cial seal­ing para­met­ers are seal­ing time, seal­ing tem­per­at­ure, seal­ing pres­sure, and tool geo­metry. Fiber dir­ec­tion also plays a role, i.e., the ori­ent­a­tion of the ma­ter­i­al re­l­at­ive to the seal­ing tool.” Marek Haupt­mann, head of the joint project, adds: “We are es­sen­tially striv­ing for a bond strength that is high­er than the in­ter­ply ad­he­sion of the pa­per lay­ers. We are already achiev­ing good bonds in the shear tests. We can eas­ily lift 20 kilo­grams with a seal that is only two cen­ti­meters long and three mil­li­meters wide.”

Ad­hes­ive-free seal­ing in­teg­rates in­to ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion

At Fraunhofer IWU in Dresden, a labor­at­ory-scale mod­u­lar pa­per pro­cessing man­u­fac­tur­ing unit is cur­rently be­ing de­veloped that rep­lic­ates the pro­cess for man­u­fac­tur­ing a flat four-sided bag—com­monly used for pack­aging—in a roll-to-roll pro­cess. The primary fo­cus of the work is de­vel­op­ing and in­teg­rat­ing a laser and a seal­ing mod­ule in­to the ap­prox­im­ately six-meter-long, one-meter-deep and two-meter-high in­dus­tri­al-type demon­strat­or. The ad­hes­ive-free seal­ing pro­cess is be­ing ad­ap­ted based on sensors proven in in­dustry (in­clud­ing im­age and mois­ture sensors) and a di­git­al twin with a trained data mod­el. The sur­face of the pa­per web run­ning con­tinu­ously through the plant is first ir­ra­di­ated with the CO laser, pro­du­cing the cleav­age products men­tioned above. A second pa­per web is then fed in, joined with four seams us­ing a com­bined seal­ing and punch­ing tool in a heat-seal­ing pro­cess, and is then punched out to form a bag. The heat gen­er­ated dur­ing the seal­ing pro­cess ac­tiv­ates the cleav­age products, caus­ing the two pa­per webs to bond to­geth­er. In the fu­ture, a seal seam meas­ure­ment sys­tem in­stalled in the pi­lot plant as a qual­ity con­trol meas­ure will re­cord real-time changes in seal seam qual­ity, en­abling rap­id ad­just­ment of laser and seal­ing para­met­ers. Fraunhofer IWU re­search sci­ent­ist Chris­ter-Clif­ford Schen­ke: “Our goal is to pro­duce ten pack­ages per minute on the pi­lot sys­tem by the end of the project in Septem­ber 2026.”

Present­a­tion at In­ter­pack 2026

The prac­tic­al, mod­u­lar demon­strat­or shows that the pro­cess can be in­teg­rated in­to ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion pro­cesses in the fu­ture. Both the laser mod­ule and the seal­ing tool can be im­ple­men­ted sep­ar­ately in pro­duc­tion. This makes the pro­cess es­pe­cially at­tract­ive for pack­aging ma­chine man­u­fac­tur­ers, pack­aging ma­ter­i­al pro­du­cers and pack­agers. The in­teg­ra­tion of PAP­URE tech­no­logy en­ables com­pan­ies in this in­dustry to po­s­i­tion them­selves as pi­on­eers in the field of “green pack­aging.” 

To­geth­er with in­ter­ested com­pan­ies from the pack­aging and food in­dus­tries, as well as pa­per man­u­fac­tur­ers and mech­an­ic­al en­gin­eer­ing firms, the project part­ners in­tend to fur­ther de­vel­op the plant for large-scale pro­duc­tion. Fraunhofer re­search­ers will be present­ing the po­ten­tial ap­plic­a­tions of this tech­no­logy and show­ing how the sys­tem works at the In­ter­pack 2026 trade show from May 7 to 13 in the Tech­no­logy Lounge of the Ger­man Ma­chinery and Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­ation (VDMA) in Düsseldorf (Hall 4, Booth C54).

Today, pack­aging is primar­ily com­posed of a blend of ma­ter­i­als con­sist­ing of dif­fer­ent poly­mer lay­ers. Al­though com­pos­ite ma­ter­i­als have an ex­cel­lent bar­ri­er ef­fect, they are dif­fi­cult to re­cycle. Pack­aging made from mono­ma­ter­i­als, such as pure plastics, can be re­cycled ex­tremely well. In many cases, coat­ings can provide mono­ma­ter­i­als with a bar­ri­er func­tion that is just as re­li­able as that of com­pos­ite ma­ter­i­als. For single-type re­cyc­ling, as re­quired by the new European Pack­aging Waste Reg­u­la­tion (PPWR), the pro­por­tion of for­eign ma­ter­i­al due to coat­ing should be in the per mille range or lower. Plasma coat­ing pro­cesses can achieve this by de­pos­it­ing nano­met­er-thin coat­ings, con­sist­ing of ma­ter­i­als such as sil­ic­on or alu­min­um ox­ide, onto a poly­mer sub­strate. To re­li­ably pro­tect products, these su­per­bar­ri­ers must be of flaw­less qual­ity. In oth­er words, the re­quired lay­er thick­ness and con­tinu­ous cov­er­age must be con­sist­ently achieved across the en­tire sur­face.

100 per­cent qual­ity con­trol

A team at Fraunhofer IPM has de­veloped a meth­od to meas­ure the qual­ity of coat­ings thin­ner than ten nano­met­ers im­me­di­ately after the coat­ing pro­cess, while still on the pro­duc­tion line. This pat­ent-pending meth­od uses the ma­ter­i­al-spe­cif­ic in­frared re­flec­tion of the coat­ing. There is a lin­ear re­la­tion­ship between the re­flec­ted in­frared sig­nal and the lay­er thick­ness, al­low­ing con­clu­sions about the thick­ness to be drawn. The Film In­spect sensor uses this re­la­tion­ship to meas­ure lay­er thick­ness in just 0.2 seconds with an ac­cur­acy in the single-di­git nano­met­er range. The sensor’s op­tic­al design al­lows meas­ure­ments to be taken even on com­plex, three-di­men­sion­al sur­faces. To re­li­ably con­trol the qual­ity, one meas­ure­ment at a single point on the sur­face is suf­fi­cient. Since plasma ex­pands spa­tially, the en­tire sample will be coated ho­mo­gen­eously, provided the sur­face with­in the meas­ur­ing range has the de­sired coat­ing thick­ness.

Pro­cess con­trol im­ple­men­ted in plasma coat­ing sys­tem

The sensor was tested in a project part­ner’s pro­duc­tion line. Plasma Elec­tron­ic GmbH coats in­jec­tion-mol­ded polypro­pyl­ene con­tain­ers. Fraunhofer IPM in­stalled and in­teg­rated vari­ous Film-In­spect sensors in­to their plant’s con­trol sys­tem to mon­it­or the pro­cess. If the meas­ured lay­er thick­ness does not meet spe­cific­a­tions, the coat­ing pro­cess can be ad­jus­ted by chan­ging para­met­ers such as plasma power, pro­cess time, gas flow rates, or cham­ber pres­sure. Thus, Film-In­spect not only en­ables qual­ity as­sur­ance but also re­duces waste and pre­vents over­coat­ing.

In ad­di­tion to su­per­bar­ri­ers for mono­ma­ter­i­al pack­aging and films, sci­ent­ists at Fraunhofer IPM are ex­plor­ing oth­er mar­kets. “Ul­tra-thin bar­ri­er lay­ers are used in med­ic­al and aerospace tech­no­logy to en­sure ster­il­ity, re­duce fric­tion, and pre­vent cor­ro­sion,” says project man­ager Dr. Be­ne­dikt Hauer. “Film-In­spect can also provide valu­able in­form­a­tion about the thick­ness and chem­ic­al com­pos­i­tion of the coat­ing in these areas.”
 

The in­cum­bent Pres­id­ent of the Su­per­vis­ory Board, Mat­thi­as Al­ten­dorf, has de­cided not to seek reelec­tion at the En­dress+Haus­er AG An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing on 13 April 2026. He gave the fam­ily early no­tice of this to al­low for a smooth suc­ces­sion pro­cess. “The fam­ily re­grets this step but re­spects Mr Al­ten­dorf’s de­cision,” said Klaus En­dress, Chair­man of the Fam­ily Coun­cil, the body rep­res­ent­ing all branches of the share­hold­er fam­ily.

Su­per­vis­ory Board Pres­id­ent from with­in the fam­ily “It has al­ways been our goal that the pres­id­ency of the Su­per­vis­ory Board should one day be held once again by a young mem­ber of the fam­ily,” Klaus En­dress ad­ded. “This mo­ment has now ar­rived soon­er than planned. We – the fam­ily and the com­pany – are ready for it.” The Fam­ily Coun­cil has de­cided un­an­im­ously to re­com­mend Steven En­dress for elec­tion as the new Pres­id­ent of the Su­per­vis­ory Board at the An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing. This un­der­scores the strong bonds between the fam­ily and the com­pany.

Steven En­dress (47), a grand­child of the com­pany founder, has been a mem­ber of the Su­per­vis­ory Board since 2024. He has pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence in the soft­ware and pro­cess in­dus­tries and worked for a total of 12 years at En­dress+Haus­er UK, ul­ti­mately serving as Man­aging Dir­ect­or. He holds a de­gree in busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion and an MBA.

Gen­er­a­tion­al han­dover on the Fam­ily Coun­cil 

The young­er gen­er­a­tion is also tak­ing on ad­di­tion­al re­spons­ib­il­ity on the Fam­ily Coun­cil, the most im­port­ant link between the fam­ily and the com­pany. Sandra Genge has been ap­poin­ted as this body’s Vice Chair, tak­ing over from Urs En­dress, and is ex­pec­ted to ul­ti­mately suc­ceed Chair­man Dr Klaus En­dress. Dr En­dress, who has headed the Fam­ily Coun­cil since its es­tab­lish­ment in 2001, has an­nounced his in­ten­tion to step down from this role in 2027.

Sandra Genge (48), a grand­child of the com­pany founder, has been rep­res­ent­ing the fam­ily on the Su­per­vis­ory Board since 2022. “Her dual role en­ables her to fur­ther strengthen the Fam­ily Coun­cil’s vi­tal link­ing func­tion,” said Klaus En­dress. A me­dia sci­ence gradu­ate with qual­i­fic­a­tions in mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tion man­age­ment, Sandra Genge was a man­aging part­ner of an agency for many years. She cur­rently works as an in­de­pend­ent design and com­mu­nic­a­tion con­sult­ant.

Re­cog­ni­tion for ser­vice over sev­er­al dec­ades 

Mat­thi­as Al­ten­dorf (born 1967) has been with En­dress+Haus­er for nearly 40 years. He star­ted out as an ap­pren­tice mech­an­ic. Next came stud­ies at uni­versity, fol­lowed by a stint abroad and fur­ther train­ing. In 2009, he was ap­poin­ted to the Ex­ec­ut­ive Board, tak­ing over as Chief Ex­ec­ut­ive Of­ficer in 2014 and lead­ing the Group in that role with foresight and sound judg­ment for 10 suc­cess­ful years. Since 2024, he has over­seen the gen­er­a­tion­al han­dover at the top level of the com­pany in his ca­pa­city as Pres­id­ent of the Su­per­vis­ory Board. “Mat­thi­as Al­ten­dorf has made a de­cis­ive con­tri­bu­tion to En­dress+Haus­er’s suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment. This de­serves re­cog­ni­tion,” com­men­ted Klaus En­dress. The fam­ily and the com­pany ex­press their grat­it­ude for his con­tri­bu­tions, achieve­ments and dis­tin­guished ser­vice. Mat­thi­as Al­ten­dorf: “In nearly 40 years of col­lab­or­a­tion, we al­ways treated each oth­er with re­spect. I am grate­ful for my time at En­dress+Haus­er and am de­lighted by the ap­pre­ci­ation shown to me by the fam­ily and the com­pany.”
 

Think­Cir­cu­lar­ity ini­tially fo­cuses on plastic re­cyc­ling. Each Think­Top con­tains 500 grams of plastic, and the pi­lot project has demon­strated that this ma­ter­i­al can be re­cycled to pro­duce new units without com­prom­ising qual­ity. Tests con­firm that the mix of re­used and vir­gin plastic in fu­ture units meets all per­form­ance stand­ards – from tensile strength to dur­ab­il­ity. 
Fur­ther­more, oth­er ma­ter­i­als and com­pon­ents from the Think­Tops – such as valu­able metals and elec­tron­ics – are re­spons­ibly re­cycled. 

”Cir­cu­lar think­ing is not just a buzzword for us – it is a re­spons­ib­il­ity,” says In­ger By­gum, Head of Sus­tain­ab­il­ity at Alfa Lav­al Hy­gien­ic Flu­id Hand­ling and Heat Trans­fer Tech­no­lo­gies. “With Think­Cir­cu­lar­ity, we en­sure that ma­ter­i­als from old Think­Tops can be re­used, re­cycled or dis­posed of in the most re­spons­ible and value-cre­at­ing man­ner.”

First units re­turned

In food, dairy and pharma in­dus­tries, there is an on­go­ing fo­cus on pro­cess op­tim­iz­a­tion and re­source sav­ings. For in­stance, by up­grad­ing their ex­ist­ing Think­Top con­trol units, which can save 90% on wa­ter and en­ergy used for clean­ing-in-place. This is also the case in Nor­way, where Skala, the Alfa Lav­al Mas­ter Dis­trib­ut­or, spe­cial­izes in ser­vi­cing hy­gien­ic in­dus­tries. They re­cently in­tro­duced the Think­Cir­cu­lar­ity take-back scheme to their cus­tom­ers and have already sent back sev­er­al hun­dred units.

“Our cus­tom­ers care about wa­ter and en­ergy ef­fi­ciency – and sus­tain­ab­il­ity,” says Owe Barsten, Re­spons­ible Man­ager at Skala Com­pon­ents. “Up­grades mean that older units are scrapped, but now we can of­fer a truly cir­cu­lar solu­tion where old Think­Tops give life to the next gen­er­a­tion.” 

First step in a broad­er cir­cu­lar­ity strategy

Key ele­ments in Alfa Lav­al’s cir­cu­lar­ity strategy in­clude design­ing products for dur­ab­il­ity, high ef­fi­ciency and long life­time. With Think­Cir­cu­lar­ity, the com­pany now closes the loop by of­fer­ing an end-of-life solu­tion that en­sures that old products are scrapped re­spons­ibly and new products in the fu­ture can be made from re­cycled plastic. In­ger By­gum em­phas­izes that this pi­lot project is only the start: 
“Re­cyc­ling plastic from old Think­Tops is just a small drop in a vast ocean of cir­cu­lar op­por­tun­it­ies. Still, this pi­lot project is im­port­ant to us and has taught us valu­able les­sons that will help us de­vel­op new busi­ness mod­els, part­ner­ships and meth­ods to scale re­use and re­cyc­ling.”  

So far, the Think­Cir­cu­lar­ity ini­ti­at­ive has been launched in se­lec­ted European coun­tries.
 

Glob­al ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion ex­perts are hold­ing their reg­u­lar spring meet­ing in Man­nheim this year. From 16–27 March 2026, around 170 lead­ing spe­cial­ists will gath­er at the headquar­ters of the long-es­tab­lished Man­nheim-based com­pany Pep­perl+Fuchs to work to­geth­er as a com­mit­tee on the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al har­mon­iz­a­tion of ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion stand­ards. The par­ti­cipants in­clude rep­res­ent­at­ives from man­u­fac­tur­ers, mar­ket sur­veil­lance au­thor­it­ies, test­ing or­gan­iz­a­tions, and end users from 23 coun­tries.

De­fin­ing clear and re­li­able stand­ards

The stand­ards de­veloped and defined by In­ter­na­tion­al Elec­tro­tech­nic­al Com­mis­sion Tech­nic­al Com­mit­tee 31 (IEC TC 31) play a key role in en­sur­ing safety in a wide range of en­vir­on­ments, from pet­rol sta­tions and in­dus­tri­al mills to com­plex chem­ic­al plants. This year’s agenda once again ad­dresses highly rel­ev­ant top­ics. These in­clude the safe use of ro­bots and drones in haz­ard­ous areas, meth­ods for man­aging ig­ni­tion risks posed by lith­i­um bat­ter­ies, and de­vel­op­ments in the rap­idly emer­ging hy­dro­gen sec­tor.

"Clear and re­li­able ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion stand­ards are more im­port­ant than ever in today’s highly auto­mated and in­creas­ingly dy­nam­ic world. They provide the found­a­tion for safe sys­tems and pro­cesses. We look for­ward to two ex­cit­ing and pro­duct­ive weeks at our headquar­ters in Man­nheim," com­men­ted Dr. Wil­helm Nehring, CEO of the Pep­perl+Fuchs Group.

Pep­perl+Fuchs is one of the world's lead­ing sup­pli­ers of com­pon­ents and solu­tions for elec­tric­al ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion. The com­pany has been act­ively in­volved for dec­ades in com­mit­tees and in­dustry as­so­ci­ations ded­ic­ated to de­vel­op­ing and ad­van­cing norms and stand­ards in the field of ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion.
 

The meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy man­u­fac­turer and II­oT solu­tion pro­vider WIKA has held a stake in Asystom since 2024. As the ma­jor­ity share­hold­er, WIKA now in­tends to play an even more act­ive role in shap­ing the com­pany’s stra­tegic dir­ec­tion. The glob­al net­work of WIKA sub­si­di­ar­ies is to strengthen the sales and ser­vi­cing of the Asystom solu­tions – for ex­ample for in­stall­a­tion. WIKA will also use its re­search and de­vel­op­ment re­sources to col­lab­or­ate with Asystom on the con­tinu­ous de­vel­op­ment of its port­fo­lio.

Asystom de­vel­ops ad­vanced sensors and in­tel­li­gent solu­tions for the re­mote mon­it­or­ing of in­dus­tri­al sys­tems. The com­pany’s core of­fer­ing is based on em­bed­ded acous­tic and vi­bra­tion data pro­cessing tech­no­lo­gies, com­bined with AI-driv­en ana­lyt­ics and dia­gnost­ic tools that en­able con­tinu­ous ma­chine health mon­it­or­ing. Multi­s­ensor in­stru­ments sup­port sig­nal ac­quis­i­tion, while the II­oT soft­ware lay­er ana­lyses the data and de­tects de­vi­ations us­ing ma­chine learn­ing. This en­ables com­pan­ies in the pro­cess and man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­tries to identi­fy an­om­alies at an early stage and per­form tar­geted main­ten­ance on their sys­tems. Users can there­fore avoid costly fail­ures and or­gan­ise their main­ten­ance pro­cesses much more ef­fi­ciently.

“WIKA sees it­self as a driver for the de­vel­op­ment of pi­on­eer­ing II­oT tech­no­lo­gies,” says Thomas Hasen­oehrl, WIKA’s Vice Pres­id­ent II­oT Sys­tems & Solu­tions. “The ma­jor­ity stake in Asystom is an­oth­er stra­tegic mile­stone in this re­gard. The II­oT of­fers enorm­ous op­tim­isa­tion po­ten­tial for the in­dustry, par­tic­u­larly in the field of pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance. With its in­nov­at­ive, scal­able solu­tion, Asystom com­ple­ments our part­ner net­work per­fectly.”

Pierre Nac­cache, Asystom’s CEO, says: “In­dus­tri­al play­ers need solu­tions that stand the test of time. With WIKA, we com­bine glob­al de­ploy­ment cap­ab­il­it­ies and a shared tech­no­logy vis­ion to de­liv­er a com­plete, in­teg­rable and scal­able ap­proach that brings to­geth­er sensors, con­nectiv­ity, soft­ware and ser­vices, ad­dress­ing in­dus­tri­al needs in the short, me­di­um and long term. Our am­bi­tion goes bey­ond pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance alone: we want to provide an open and fu­ture-proof found­a­tion for col­lect­ing, pro­cessing and turn­ing in­dus­tri­al sensor data in­to ac­tion­able value at scale.”
 

Mr. Yoshida brings with him more than 30 years of ex­per­i­ence work­ing at Mit­subishi Elec­tric, hav­ing star­ted his ca­reer at the com­pany´s Nagoya Works in 1992. Since then, he has held a vari­ety of seni­or ma­na­geri­al po­s­i­tions across the busi­ness, not­ably be­ing tasked with head­ing up the in­vert­er de­vel­op­ment de­part­ment in 2017 and be­ing ap­poin­ted Man­aging Dir­ect­or of the Fact­ory Auto­ma­tion unit at Mit­subishi Elec­tric In­dia in 2021.

He re­turned to Ja­pan in 2024, where he was made the head of the Field En­gin­eer­ing Cen­ter, be­fore tak­ing up his cur­rent po­s­i­tion in Oc­to­ber 2025. Look­ing ahead, Mr. Yoshida will fo­cus on grow­ing the Fact­ory Auto­ma­tion busi­ness unit´s mar­ket share throughout Europe by con­tinu­ing its evol­u­tion away from a product-fo­cused com­pany to a stra­tegic solu­tions pro­vider for its OEM, sys­tems in­teg­rat­or and end-user cus­tom­er base.

Speak­ing about his ap­point­ment, Mr. Yoshida said: “I am de­lighted to be con­tinu­ing my Mit­subishi Elec­tric jour­ney in Europe. While European in­dustry has faced sev­er­al press­ing chal­lenges in re­cent years, not least the sig­ni­fic­ant volat­il­ity in en­ergy pri­cing and grow­ing num­ber of OT cy­ber-at­tacks, we re­main com­mit­ted to help­ing our cus­tom­ers lever­age the be­ne­fits of auto­ma­tion to stay com­pet­it­ive, ef­fi­cient and re­si­li­ent in a dy­nam­ic op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ment.” 
 

For dec­ades, in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion has been built on the simple over­arch­ing prin­ciple that re­li­ab­il­ity comes first. Dis­trib­uted con­trol sys­tems (DCS) have de­livered the de­term­in­ist­ic, real-time con­trol that in­dus­tries de­pend on to keep en­ergy flow­ing, chem­ic­als pro­cessing, ma­ter­i­als mov­ing and goods pro­duced safely and ef­fi­ciently. Today though, that found­a­tion is un­der un­pre­ced­en­ted pres­sure. Mar­ket factors such as volat­il­ity, sus­tain­ab­il­ity tar­gets, cy­ber­se­cur­ity threats, work­force change and the ac­cel­er­at­ing pace of di­git­al in­nov­a­tion are all for­cing in­dus­tries to re­think how auto­ma­tion evolves without jeop­ard­iz­ing op­er­a­tions.

While the ad­vent of In­dustry 4.0 saw the mass ad­op­tion of di­git­al­iz­a­tion, it also high­lighted the lim­ited flex­ib­il­ity of ex­ist­ing sys­tems to ac­com­mod­ate change, es­pe­cially in terms of real­iz­ing the full be­ne­fits of the tech­no­logy. Rap­id de­vel­op­ments in II­oT, cloud, edge and data ana­lyt­ics have blurred the lines between tra­di­tion­ally dis­tinct IT and OT sys­tems. In ad­di­tion, op­er­at­ors have faced the trans­la­tion of big data from field devices and con­nec­ted sys­tems in­to meas­ur­able gains in pro­duc­tion ef­fi­ciency, sus­tain­ab­il­ity and re­si­li­ence.

ABB’s new Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded pro­gram is a dir­ect re­sponse to these chal­lenges. In­stead of need­ing cus­tom­ers to re­place what already works, Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded provides a struc­tured, fu­ture-ready way to mod­ern­ize in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion while en­sur­ing con­tinu­ity, pro­tect­ing pri­or in­vest­ments and in­fra­struc­ture and safe­guard­ing mis­sion-crit­ic­al op­er­a­tions.

From tra­di­tion­al DCS to Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded

Mod­ern­iz­a­tion in pro­cess auto­ma­tion has his­tor­ic­ally in­volved dis­rupt­ive sys­tem mi­gra­tions, ma­jor shut­downs or long up­grade cycles that force cus­tom­ers to choose between in­nov­a­tion and op­er­a­tion­al sta­bil­ity. While di­git­al tech­no­lo­gies, in­clud­ing ad­vanced ana­lyt­ics, AI, edge in­tel­li­gence and cloud con­nectiv­ity have prom­ised sig­ni­fic­ant per­form­ance gains, in­teg­rat­ing them in­to leg­acy con­trol en­vir­on­ments has of­ten en­tailed in­creased com­plex­ity and risk.

Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded rep­res­ents a de­cis­ive shift. It is not a new DCS in the tra­di­tion­al sense, nor a bolt-on di­git­al lay­er de­tached from con­trol. In­stead, it is provid­ing new cap­ab­il­it­ies to ABB’s ex­ist­ing auto­ma­tion plat­forms through a mod­ern, open and mod­u­lar auto­ma­tion eco­sys­tem, built ex­pli­citly to sup­port con­tinu­ous in­nov­a­tion without dis­turb­ing core con­trol func­tions.

Cru­cially, Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded builds on sys­tems that cus­tom­ers already trust, spe­cific­ally ABB Abil­ity™ Sys­tem 800xA®, ABB Abil­ity™ Sym­phony® Plus and ABB Freel­ance. Tried, tested and proven in mul­tiple ap­plic­a­tions across mul­tiple in­dus­tries, these plat­forms re­main the back­bone of plant op­er­a­tions, while new cap­ab­il­it­ies are in­tro­duced pro­gress­ively and safely around them.

Sep­ar­a­tion of con­cerns

At the heart of Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded is a mod­ern mod­u­lar ar­chi­tec­ture, char­ac­ter­ized by the im­ple­ment­a­tion of sep­ar­a­tion of con­cerns prin­ciples in­to two dis­tinct but se­curely con­nec­ted en­vir­on­ments, each op­tim­ized for a dif­fer­ent pur­pose and op­er­at­ing as a co­hes­ive eco­sys­tem. 

The Con­trol En­vir­on­ment is where de­term­in­ist­ic, real-time pro­cess con­trol takes place. It re­mains ro­bust, li­fe­cycle-re­si­li­ent and cy­ber-se­cure, pri­or­it­iz­ing avail­ab­il­ity, safety and re­li­ab­il­ity. This en­vir­on­ment aligns closely with the tra­di­tion­al strengths of a DCS and con­tin­ues to handle the im­me­di­ate re­sponses re­quired for safe plant op­er­a­tion.

Sit­ting along­side it is the Di­git­al En­vir­on­ment. This en­vir­on­ment is es­sen­tially a flex­ible, mod­u­lar space where in­nov­a­tion hap­pens and where fea­tures and tools such as ad­vanced ana­lyt­ics, AI-driv­en ap­plic­a­tions, con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing, pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance, alarm man­age­ment and de­cision-sup­port tools can be de­ployed, up­dated or re­moved without af­fect­ing the core con­trol func­tions.

This sep­ar­a­tion is what sets Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded apart from pre­vi­ous ap­proaches, by al­low­ing each en­vir­on­ment to evolve with­in its own li­fe­cycle, at its own pace, while re­main­ing se­curely in­ter­con­nec­ted. Li­fe­cycle Ser­vices are in­teg­ral to the auto­ma­tion eco­sys­tem, en­abling not only con­tinu­ous up­dates but also op­tim­iz­a­tions without dis­rupt­ing crit­ic­al op­er­a­tions. This cre­ates a trus­ted op­er­a­tion­al found­a­tion for cus­tom­ers, al­low­ing the auto­ma­tion eco­sys­tem to re­main in­nov­at­ive while safe­guard­ing in­stalled as­sets and en­sur­ing seam­less ad­apt­a­tion to fu­ture de­mands.

In­nov­a­tion with con­tinu­ity

For in­dus­tri­al op­er­at­ors, Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded gives the abil­ity to ad­opt new di­git­al cap­ab­il­it­ies step by step that are aligned with their op­er­a­tion­al pri­or­it­ies, risk tol­er­ance and busi­ness strategy. Rather than large, one-time trans­form­a­tions, mod­ern­iz­a­tion can now be achieved in­cre­ment­ally, with en­hance­ments such as se­cur­ity patches, per­form­ance im­prove­ments and new ap­plic­a­tions ad­ded as and when ne­ces­sary, without the cost, dis­rup­tion and po­ten­tial er­rors of car­ry­ing out a full up­grade or re­place­ment. 

With op­er­at­ors fa­cing ever-press­ing pres­sures on costs, this ap­proach dir­ectly ad­dresses the need to max­im­ize the re­turn on ex­ist­ing auto­ma­tion in­vest­ments. With Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded, the life and value of even dec­ades-old plants can now be ex­ten­ded and aug­men­ted through ac­cess to mod­ern tech­no­lo­gies such as AI, edge in­tel­li­gence and real-time ana­lyt­ics.

Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded also helps cus­tom­ers man­age the grow­ing com­plex­ity of in­teg­rat­ing dif­fer­ent sys­tems from dif­fer­ent pro­viders. Open stand­ards such as OPC UA, to­geth­er with cloud-nat­ive tech­no­lo­gies and con­tain­er-based ar­chi­tec­tures, en­able in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity across vendors, sys­tems and do­mains. By re­mov­ing is­sues such as com­pat­ib­il­ity and in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity between dif­fer­ent com­mu­nic­a­tions pro­to­cols, for ex­ample, they make it easi­er to in­teg­rate new tools, con­nect IT and OT en­vir­on­ments, and scale solu­tions across sites or fleets.

Equally im­port­ant is cy­ber se­cur­ity. The clear sep­ar­a­tion between con­trol and di­git­al do­mains, com­bined with li­fe­cycle-driv­en ser­vices, helps or­gan­iz­a­tions stay com­pli­ant with evolving reg­u­la­tions while re­du­cing ex­pos­ure to cy­ber risk.

Em­power­ing a chan­ging work­force

With hu­mans still very much at the heart of in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions, there is a need to con­sider not only what new tech­no­logy can do, but also how it in­ter­acts with those who need to use it. 

As ex­per­i­enced per­son­nel re­tire and are re­placed by a new gen­er­a­tion of di­git­al-nat­ive en­gin­eers, there is a need to en­sure that their op­er­a­tion­al know­ledge is both pre­served and made as eas­ily ac­cess­ible as pos­sible. 

Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded provides in­tu­it­ive, con­nec­ted and col­lab­or­at­ive tools that res­on­ate with mod­ern skill sets, while pre­serving the proven con­trol lo­gic and op­er­a­tion­al know­ledge em­bed­ded in ex­ist­ing sys­tems. Fea­tures such as ad­vanced visu­al­iz­a­tion, ana­lyt­ics and in­tel­li­gent de­cision-sup­port ap­plic­a­tions en­sure that hu­man ex­pert­ise is aug­men­ted, help­ing op­er­at­ors and en­gin­eers make bet­ter de­cisions faster.
Cru­cially, Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded provides the found­a­tions for ac­com­mod­at­ing fu­ture changes. By an­ti­cip­at­ing fu­ture use cases, from pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance to ex­pand­ing autonom­ous op­er­a­tions, it cre­ates an en­vir­on­ment where skills can evolve along­side tech­no­logy, re­du­cing the im­pact of know­ledge gaps and sup­port­ing long-term op­er­a­tion­al re­si­li­ence.

En­abling sus­tain­ab­il­ity and per­form­ance at scale

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and reg­u­lat­ory pres­sures on en­ergy, emis­sions and re­sources are in­creas­ingly re­shap­ing the pri­or­it­ies of in­dus­tri­al com­pan­ies. Meet­ing these pres­sures de­pends on bet­ter data, deep­er in­sight and tight­er in­teg­ra­tion between pro­cess and elec­tric­al sys­tems.

By ex­tend­ing the reach of con­trol sys­tems in­to data-driv­en op­tim­iz­a­tion, Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded sup­ports these goals. En­hance­ments such as con­tinu­ous con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing, AI-as­sisted per­form­ance ana­lys­is and real-time en­ergy in­sights all en­able more ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tions without com­prom­ising safety or avail­ab­il­ity. Over time, these cap­ab­il­it­ies can help achieve the trans­ition to­ward lower-car­bon, more re­source-ef­fi­cient pro­duc­tion mod­els, while main­tain­ing the re­li­ab­il­ity that es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­ture de­mands.

A uni­fied li­fe­cycle ap­proach

An­oth­er de­fin­ing ele­ment of Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded is ABB’s com­pre­hens­ive li­fe­cycle ser­vices. Man­aging con­trol and di­git­al en­vir­on­ments in­de­pend­ently re­quires a co­ordin­ated ap­proach to up­dates, main­ten­ance and op­tim­iz­a­tion. ABB’s li­fe­cycle ser­vices en­sure that sys­tems re­main se­cure, sup­por­ted and fu­ture-ready throughout their op­er­a­tion­al life.

This pro­act­ive, ser­vice-driv­en mod­el re­duces total cost of own­er­ship, im­proves sys­tem avail­ab­il­ity and as­sures cus­tom­ers that their auto­ma­tion en­vir­on­ment can ad­apt to fu­ture de­mands wheth­er driv­en by reg­u­la­tion, mar­ket shifts or tech­no­lo­gic­al change.

Un­lock­ing in­dustry’s full po­ten­tial – today and to­mor­row 

With Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded, ABB is not ask­ing cus­tom­ers to aban­don the sys­tems that have served them well, but rather ex­tend­ing their value in­to the next era of in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion.

Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded also re­flects a broad­er shift in how in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion is evolving. By ad­opt­ing emer­ging in­dustry con­cepts such as NAMUR Open Ar­chi­tec­ture, soft­ware and hard­ware de­coup­ling, and hy­per­auto­ma­tion,  ABB opens up new pos­sib­il­it­ies in in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions through great­er open­ness, mod­u­lar­ity, hu­man-cent­ric design and se­cure in­nov­a­tion.

Rather than lock­ing cus­tom­ers in­to ri­gid up­grade cycles, ABB is po­s­i­tion­ing auto­ma­tion as a con­tinu­ously evolving eco­sys­tem that bal­ances sta­bil­ity with agil­ity, and re­li­ab­il­ity with in­nov­a­tion. For in­dus­tries fa­cing an un­cer­tain fu­ture, this bal­ance will be in­valu­able, provid­ing the scalab­il­ity and ad­apt­ab­il­ity to meet fu­ture changes and chal­lenges.

Read more about Auto­ma­tion Ex­ten­ded Auto­ma­tion ex­ten­ded | ABB

Stefan Basen­ach 
He has worked at the Swiss group ABB for over 20 years and is cur­rently Seni­or Vice Pres­id­ent of Glob­al Pro­cess Auto­ma­tion Tech­no­logy. He is com­mit­ted to im­ple­ment­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices and played a key role in lead­ing the ABB Pro­cess Auto­ma­tion En­ergy Di­vi­sion in Ger­many in sup­port­ing the en­ergy in­dustry in its trans­ition to­wards a net zero eco­nomy.

He holds a Dip­lom In­genieur de­gree in Tech­nis­che Ky­ber­netik (Tech­nic­al Cy­ber­net­ics) from the Uni­versity of Stut­tgart, spe­cial­ising in con­trol meth­od­o­logy for tech­nic­al and non-tech­nic­al sys­tems with a fo­cus on bio­chem­ic­al en­gin­eer­ing.

Fara­da­ic Sensors GmbH and blu­log today an­nounce the launch of SEAL­PROOF™, a next-gen­er­a­tion at­mo­sphere in­teg­rity mon­it­or­ing solu­tion de­signed to veri­fy low-oxy­gen con­di­tions in sealed pack­aging. Built on Fara­da­ic’s break­through MECS-Tech­no­logy® (Mi­cro-Elec­tro-Chem­ic­al-Sys­tems) and in­teg­rated in­to blu­log’s proven IoT eco­sys­tem, SEAL­PROOF™ de­liv­ers meas­ur­able proof of pack­aging in­teg­rity—trans­form­ing how food, fresh pro­duce, and sens­it­ive goods like semi­con­duct­or ma­ter­i­als are mon­itored from pro­duc­tion to glob­al trans­port.

Ad­dress­ing a Crit­ic­al In­dustry Gap

Fresh pro­duce and high-value food products rely on Mod­i­fied At­mo­sphere Pack­aging (MAP) and Con­trolled At­mo­sphere Pack­aging (CAP) to main­tain shelf life, qual­ity, and safety. Yet in most cases, the pro­tect­ive at­mo­sphere in­side pack­aging is as­sumed—not veri­fied. This can res­ult in re­duced shelf life, avoid­able waste and re­turns, lim­ited trans­par­ency across the cold chain, and in­suf­fi­cient doc­u­ment­a­tion for audits or cus­tom­er claims. SEAL­PROOF™ changes that paradigm. It is a com­pact oxy­gen (O₂) mon­it­or­ing solu­tion that provides con­tinu­ous veri­fic­a­tion of low-oxy­gen con­di­tions in­side sealed pack­ages and con­tain­ers. By de­tect­ing oxy­gen in­gress early, SEAL­PROOF™ en­ables pro­act­ive qual­ity con­trol and re­li­able doc­u­ment­a­tion for com­pli­ance and con­tinu­ous im­prove­ment.

Powered by MECS-Tech­no­logy®

At the heart of SEAL­PROOF™ is Fara­da­ic’s pro­pri­et­ary MECS-Tech­no­logy®, a fully sol­id-state elec­tro­chem­ic­al gas sensor plat­form man­u­fac­tured us­ing MEMS-type pro­cesses. The Faraday-Ox® Di­git­al Oxy­gen Gas Sens­ing Mod­ule com­bines ul­tra-low power con­sump­tion (<5 μA), fast re­sponse times (T90 < 1 s), fact­ory cal­ib­ra­tion, and in­teg­rated tem­per­at­ure and hu­mid­ity com­pens­a­tion in a mini­ature foot­print of just 10.2 × 25.0 × 5.0 mm. Faraday-Ox® en­sures pre­cise, stable, and long-term per­form­ance, and de­tec­tion of oxy­gen in­gress in the low-% range without elec­tro­lyte leak­age or typ­ic­al aging ef­fects when not in use. Its com­pact, chip-based design makes it ideally suited for high-volume ap­plic­a­tions in pack­aging, lo­gist­ics, and in­dus­tri­al IoT.

Seam­less In­teg­ra­tion with IoT Eco­sys­tem

SEAL­PROOF™ is en­gin­eered with blu­log, a Pol­ish-French tech­no­logy com­pany with over 15 years of R&D ex­per­i­ence in M2M and IoT sys­tems. The solu­tion in­teg­rates dir­ectly in­to blu­log’s log­ger and soft­ware eco­sys­tem, en­abling timestamped data stor­age, cloud or app-based ac­cess, and auto­mated re­port­ing.

The sys­tem work­flow is simple and scal­able: sealed pack­age or con­tain­er → SEAL­PROOF™ sensor mod­ule → blu­log log­ger → data ex­port and re­port­ing (QR, NFC, app, or cloud op­tion­al). The res­ult is a clear “At­mo­sphere OK” veri­fic­a­tion or im­me­di­ate iden­ti­fic­a­tion of leak or oxy­gen in­gress, com­plete with di­git­al proof for QA teams and cus­tom­ers. SEAL­PROOF™ ex­tends Fara­da­IC’s oxy­gen mon­it­or­ing plat­form, demon­strated in the semi­con­duct­or in­dustry un­der some of the harshest con­di­tions, in­clud­ing 0% RH en­vir­on­ments. With this ro­bust val­id­a­tion the SEAL­PROOF solu­tion and is now in­tro­duced and ex­pan­ded in­to dry food, phar­ma­ceut­ic­al, seeds, med­ic­al, and smart pack­aging ap­plic­a­tions. 

Pro­to­type Pro­gram 2026

SEAL­PROOF™ is cur­rently avail­able as part of a Pro­to­type Pro­gram 2026 for se­lec­ted part­ners and early ad­op­ters. The pro­gram en­ables for­ward-think­ing com­pan­ies to in­teg­rate at­mo­sphere veri­fic­a­tion in­to their pack­aging lines and lo­gist­ics op­er­a­tions—re­du­cing risk, im­prov­ing data trans­par­ency, and un­lock­ing meas­ur­able ROI.
 

Ant­aira Tech­no­lo­gies an­nounced the INJ-0201X-bt-AC-95-T, an ul­tra-high power 10 Gig­abit Eth­er­net PoE in­ject­or pur­pose-built to elim­in­ate in­fra­struc­ture bot­tle­necks in power-hungry, high-band­width in­dus­tri­al net­works. Com­bin­ing 95W PoE++ de­liv­ery with full multi-gig cop­per sup­port up to 10GBase-T, the INJ-0201X-bt-AC-95-T en­ables single-cable de­ploy­ment of next-gen­er­a­tion ma­chine vis­ion cam­er­as, Wi-Fi 6E/7 ac­cess points, and in­tel­li­gent PTZ sur­veil­lance sys­tems—even in the harshest in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments.

Most in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­it­ies, factor­ies, ware­houses, and build­ings have read­ily avail­able AC out­lets or wir­ing. With in­teg­rated AC in­put, the INJ-0201X-bt-AC-95-T elim­in­ates the re­quire­ment for a sep­ar­ate ex­tern­al DC power sup­ply, ad­apter, or con­vert­er, sim­pli­fy­ing in­stall­a­tion, re­du­cing com­pon­ents, and lower­ing costs. AC in­put al­lows plug-and-play setup where grid power is present, avoid­ing the need to source or main­tain spe­cif­ic DC voltages, such as 12V, 24V or 48V bat­ter­ies or sol­ar power.

En­gin­eered for Crit­ic­al Ap­plic­a­tions

The INJ-0201X-bt-AC-95-T de­liv­ers wire-speed 10Gbps through­put across dual RJ45 cop­per in­ter­faces while sim­ul­tan­eously provid­ing up to 95 watts of IEEE 802.3bt-com­pli­ant power. This unique com­bin­a­tion ad­dresses the es­cal­at­ing de­mands of in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion and se­cur­ity in­fra­struc­ture, where devices in­creas­ingly re­quire both ex­treme band­width for 4K/8K video streams and sub­stan­tial power for mo­tor­ized op­tics, IR il­lu­min­at­ors, and edge AI pro­cessing.

The INJ-0201X-bt-AC-95-T elim­in­ates costly com­prom­ises in PoE-struc­tures of either sac­ri­fi­cing band­width for ad­equate power or run­ning sep­ar­ate power cables, de­liv­er­ing 10-gig­abit speeds along­side 95 watts of re­li­able PoE++ power in a hardened pack­age rated for -40°C to 75°C op­er­a­tion and IP40-rated pro­tec­tion. The IEC C14 power in­put sock­et provides uni­ver­sal com­pat­ib­il­ity with stand­ard power in­fra­struc­ture, while dual mount­ing op­tions (DIN-rail and wall-mount) en­able rap­id de­ploy­ment in equip­ment cab­in­ets, out­door en­clos­ures, and space-con­strained in­stall­a­tions.

Per­acet­ic acid (PAA) is widely used in med­ic­al, phar­ma­ceut­ic­al, and hy­giene ap­plic­a­tions as a fast-act­ing, broad‑spec­trum dis­in­fect­ant. Its strong ox­id­iz­ing prop­er­ties al­low it to elim­in­ate bac­teria, vir­uses, fungi, and spores even at low tem­per­at­ures, while break­ing down in­to en­vir­on­ment­ally be­nign by-products such as acet­ic acid, oxy­gen, and wa­ter.

However, PAA’s ef­fect­ive­ness de­pends on pre­cise con­cen­tra­tion con­trol. Un­der­dos­ing can com­prom­ise dis­in­fec­tion, while over­dos­ing risks equip­ment cor­ro­sion, ma­ter­i­al de­grad­a­tion, and un­ne­ces­sary chem­ic­al ex­pos­ure. Re­li­able, ac­cur­ate, and chem­ic­ally res­ist­ant flow meas­ure­ment is there­fore es­sen­tial - qual­it­ies that define Ti­tan En­ter­prises’ NSF‑Ap­proved 800 Series flow­met­ers.

The Role of PAA in Crit­ic­al Hy­giene En­vir­on­ments

Per­acet­ic acid is used widely be­cause it fills sev­er­al im­port­ant roles in med­ic­al and oth­er de­con­tam­in­a­tion work­flows:

• High-Level In­stru­ment Dis­in­fec­tion: PAA is widely used in auto­mated en­do­scope re­pro­cessors and wash­er dis­in­fect­ors for flex­ible en­do­scopes and oth­er heat sens­it­ive in­stru­ments. These sys­tems re­quire pre­cise dos­ing to en­sure ef­fect­ive dis­in­fec­tion without dam­aging del­ic­ate com­pon­ents.
• Sur­face Dis­in­fec­tion in Clin­ic­al Areas: Hos­pit­als and labs ap­ply di­luted PAA as sprays or mists for op­er­at­ing rooms, isol­a­tion zones, and crit­ic­al sur­faces. Con­sist­ent, con­trolled di­lu­tion is es­sen­tial to main­tain re­li­able an­ti­mi­cro­bi­al per­form­ance.
• Low Tem­per­at­ure Chem­ic­al Ster­il­isa­tion: For devices un­suit­able for steam auto­claves, such as those with elec­tron­ics or sens­it­ive coat­ings, li­quid PAA of­fers a de­pend­able ster­il­isa­tion al­tern­at­ive. Ac­cur­ate, re­peat­able flow and dos­ing con­trol is key to safe, ef­fect­ive cycles.
• Phar­ma­ceut­ic­al, Biopro­cessing & Food Pro­cessing Ap­plic­a­tions: Bey­ond health­care, PAA is fre­quently used in clean-in-place (CIP) and ster­il­ise-in-place (SIP) sys­tems with­in phar­ma­ceut­ic­al man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­it­ies, bi­o­tech­no­logy labs, and food pro­duc­tion en­vir­on­ments. Its strong ox­id­ising prop­er­ties make PAA ideal for fruit and ve­get­able wash­ing, meat and poultry pro­cessing, and pack­aging line san­it­a­tion, provid­ing re­li­able mi­cro­bi­al con­trol without leav­ing chem­ic­al residues. Here again, Ti­tan’s NSF-Ap­proved flow­met­ers provide pre­cise flow mon­it­or­ing, es­sen­tial to main­tain high hy­giene stand­ards and meet strin­gent reg­u­lat­ory stand­ards.
   

En­gin­eer­ing Flow­met­ers for Chem­ic­al Res­ist­ance and Pre­ci­sion

To meet these di­verse and de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tion re­quire­ments, Ti­tan’s 800 Series flow­met­ers are built from ma­ter­i­als care­fully se­lec­ted for their ro­bust­ness and com­pat­ib­il­ity with ag­gress­ive chem­ic­als like per­acet­ic acid. Ap­proved un­der the NSF stand­ard 169 as ‘Spe­cial Pur­pose Food Equip­ment and Devices’, the meters in­cor­por­ate PVDF, seal ma­ter­i­als and sap­phire, each chosen for spe­cif­ic per­form­ance ad­vant­ages:

• PVDF (Polyvinylidene Flu­or­ide): Of­fers ex­cel­lent res­ist­ance to acids and ox­id­iz­ing agents, mak­ing it ideal for long-term con­tact with PAA.
• A vari­ety of seal op­tions in­clud­ing Viton™, EP­DM and Kalrez®, chosen for their spe­cif­ic chem­ic­al com­pat­ib­il­ity.
• Sap­phire Bear­ings: Provide ex­tremely low fric­tion and high wear res­ist­ance, en­sur­ing long op­er­at­ing life even un­der con­tinu­ous use.
   

One of the unique en­gin­eer­ing strengths of the NSF-Ap­proved 800 Series is Ti­tan’s pro­pri­et­ary tur­bine flow­met­er design, which util­ises fully en­cap­su­lated mag­net­ic com­pon­ents. In typ­ic­al tur­bine flow­met­ers, ex­posed mag­nets or metal­lic ele­ments can de­grade when ex­posed to ag­gress­ive chem­ic­als. Ti­tan’s design elim­in­ates this fail­ure mode en­tirely, of­fer­ing a re­li­able, con­tam­in­a­tion-free solu­tion for PAA dos­ing sys­tems – while main­tain­ing the flow­met­er’s com­pet­it­ive low cost. The 800 Series ex­cels in these situ­ations due to its high sens­it­iv­ity to low flow ve­lo­cit­ies and the fast pulse out­put for pre­cise elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing to en­sure con­sist­ent and re­peat­able meas­ure­ment per­form­ance. These char­ac­ter­ist­ics en­able op­er­at­ors and auto­mated sys­tems to main­tain tight dos­ing con­trol, en­sur­ing that every mil­li­litre of PAA is dis­pensed ac­cur­ately.

Safety & Ef­fi­ciency 

Ac­cur­ate flow meas­ure­ment is not merely a tech­nic­al con­veni­ence, it is a safety and per­form­ance re­quire­ment By de­liv­er­ing con­sist­ent, veri­fi­able flow data, Ti­tan’s 800 Series meters sup­port safe ster­il­isa­tion out­comes, re­duced chem­ic­al waste, ex­ten­ded equip­ment life, pre­vent­ing cor­ro­sion or ma­ter­i­al de­grad­a­tion res­ult­ing from over-con­cen­trated acid and reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance. 
 

Thanks to its uni­ver­sal ap­plic­ab­il­ity, the In­fraTec Im­ageIR® 6300 Z is ideal for de­mand­ing tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ments in re­search and de­vel­op­ment, as well as for sta­tion­ary or flight-based in­spec­tion and mon­it­or­ing tasks. The ther­mo­graph­ic zoom cam­era is also well suited for qual­ity as­sur­ance, ma­ter­i­al test­ing, or in­teg­ra­tion in­to pro­duc­tion pro­cesses.

Ra­diomet­ric­ally cal­ib­rated across the full fo­cal length

The cam­era owes its flex­ib­il­ity to the in­teg­rated 7.5x zoom lens. Mo­tor­ized fo­cus en­ables quick and con­veni­ent fo­cus­ing on any meas­ure­ment ob­ject. In ad­di­tion, users can ad­just the de­sired field of view at the touch of a but­ton while main­tain­ing the same res­ol­u­tion and a con­stant meas­ure­ment dis­tance. No fur­ther ad­just­ments are re­quired to ob­tain ac­cur­ate meas­ure­ments, as the zoom cam­era is ra­diomet­ric­ally cal­ib­rated across the en­tire fo­cal length range.

Many ther­mo­graph­ic cam­er­as are equipped with a fixed-fo­cal-length lens that is op­tim­ally matched to a spe­cif­ic meas­ure­ment situ­ation. However, if the meas­ure­ment task changes, the lens must be re­placed with a more suit­able one. Such a change is not only elab­or­ate; each ad­di­tion­al lens also in­creases the re­quired in­vest­ment. The Im­ageIR® 6300 Z, with its in­teg­rated mo­tor­ized fo­cus zoom lens, not only saves users the time needed for con­vert­ing and ad­just­ing the cam­era but also elim­in­ates the cost of pur­chas­ing ad­di­tion­al in­ter­change­able lenses.

Emer­son an­nounced the re­lease of its Rose­mount™ QX1000 Con­tinu­ous Gas Ana­lyz­er, suited for use in con­tinu­ous emis­sions mon­it­or­ing sys­tems (CEMS), but also a good fit in many oth­er types of ap­plic­a­tions. The QX1000 uses para­mag­net­ic de­tec­tion for O₂ and quantum cas­cade laser dir­ect ab­sorp­tion spec­tro­scopy for all oth­er gases to meet strin­gent per­form­ance re­quire­ments. This in­teg­ra­tion of dif­fer­ent tech­no­lo­gies and a mod­u­lar ap­proach provide a flex­ible, single-sys­tem solu­tion tailored to di­verse ap­plic­a­tion needs. 

Easy in­teg­ra­tion in ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­tures

The QX1000 uses cold/dry tech­no­logy, with a sample con­di­tion­ing sys­tem trans­port­ing gas ex­trac­ted from the pro­cess to the ana­lys­er through a ther­mo­elec­tric chiller to re­duce the tem­per­at­ure to about 4 de­grees Celsi­us (39 Fahren­heit), so most mois­ture con­denses and drops out. Users can eas­ily in­teg­rate the QX1000 in­to ex­ist­ing plant in­fra­struc­ture, or it can be provided as part of an in­teg­rated Emer­son sys­tem solu­tion, in­clud­ing the sample con­di­tion­ing sys­tem.

Meas­ure­ment sup­port of key reg­u­lat­ory gases

Meas­ure­ments made by the QX1000 are ideal for CEMS ap­plic­a­tions due to the ana­lys­er’s high se­lectiv­ity and ac­cur­acy. CEMS are re­quired at most sites with a stack emit­ting gases to at­mo­sphere, and they are widely used in chem­ic­al, oil and gas, power gen­er­a­tion, pulp and pa­per, re­fin­ing, wa­ter/wastewa­ter and oth­er in­dus­tries. Lever­aging the in­trins­ic high se­lectiv­ity of laser-based meas­ure­ment, this new ana­lys­er provides pre­cise mon­it­or­ing of com­plex gas streams while de­liv­er­ing con­tinu­ous, real-time data. Off the shelf, it sup­ports meas­ure­ment of key reg­u­lat­ory gases, in­clud­ing CO, CO₂, O₂, NO, NO₂, and SO₂, with dif­fer­ent con­fig­ur­a­tions typ­ic­ally of­fer­ing de­tec­tion of one to four gases. Meas­ure­ment of ad­di­tion­al gases, such as CH₄ and N₂O, is also avail­able.

De­signed with re­li­ab­il­ity in mind, the QX1000 elim­in­ates mov­ing parts that are prone to fail­ure and fre­quent re­place­ment, min­im­ising main­ten­ance and re­du­cing total cost of own­er­ship. Its low-con­sum­able tech­no­logy is es­pe­cially crit­ic­al in the CEMS mar­ket, where on­go­ing op­er­a­tion­al costs can be a bar­ri­er. By re­du­cing sys­tem down­time and main­ten­ance needs, the ana­lys­er helps end users avoid costly pen­al­ties as­so­ci­ated with tak­ing sys­tems off­line, en­sur­ing con­tinu­ous com­pli­ance with reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments.

AW-Lake an­nounces the launch of its TH Series High Ac­cur­acy Tur­bine Flow Meter. It is a pre­ci­sion li­quid flow meas­ure­ment solu­tion for de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions where every frac­tion of a per­cent in ac­cur­acy mat­ters. Pre­ci­sion ma­chin­ing, tight in­tern­al tol­er­ances, and stain­less-steel con­struc­tion provide stable, long-term per­form­ance in con­tinu­ous op­er­a­tion. De­signed for low-vis­cos­ity li­quids such as oils, wa­ter, and many pro­cess chem­ic­als, the TH Tur­bine meter de­liv­ers labor­at­ory-grade per­form­ance in a rugged, field-ready pack­age.

High meas­ure­ment ac­cur­acy

The meas­ur­ing ac­cur­acy is spe­cified to ±0.5% un­der con­trolled con­di­tions with lin­ear­iz­a­tion. The re­peat­ab­il­ity of­fers ±0.1% for high-con­fid­ence flow con­trol. This ac­cur­acy sup­ports crit­ic­al op­er­a­tions such as batch­ing, dos­ing, blend­ing, and test stands where even small de­vi­ations can cre­ate scrap or off-spec product.  The series of­fers a all-wel­ded stain­less-steel con­struc­tion, hardened ro­tor sup­port, and pre­ci­sion bear­ings de­liv­er dur­ab­il­ity in harsh, high-duty-cycle sys­tems. The design sup­ports high op­er­at­ing pres­sures and broad flu­id tem­per­at­ure ranges for oil­field, pro­cess, and gen­er­al in­dus­tri­al ser­vice.

Flex­ible in­teg­ra­tion

With mul­tiple line sizes and flow ranges the flow meters cov­er ap­plic­a­tions from low-flow test loops to high-flow trans­fer lines. The tur­bine can be paired with elec­tron­ic dis­plays, trans­mit­ters, or wire­less to­tal­izers for seam­less in­teg­ra­tion with PLCs, DCS, and plant his­tor­i­ans. For en­gin­eers who re­quire a tur­bine flow meter that com­bines high ac­cur­acy & re­peat­ab­il­ity, fast re­sponse times, and a rugged design, the TH Series of­fers a tightly con­trolled meas­ure­ment plat­form for crit­ic­al li­quid pro­cesses.  

With the P53 series, PiL Sensoren of­fers ro­bust ul­tra­son­ic sensors for ap­plic­a­tions with strin­gent hy­gien­ic re­quire­ments. The fully en­cap­su­lated stain­less-steel hous­ing (1.4404) fea­tures a gap-free design and a pol­ished sur­face fin­ish (< 0.8 µm), meet­ing the re­quire­ments of EHEDG and FDA. Thanks to pro­tec­tion class IP69 and ECO­L­AB cer­ti­fic­a­tion, the sensors are res­ist­ant to acid­ic and al­kaline clean­ing agents and can be cleaned ef­fi­ciently us­ing CIP (Clean­ing in Place) pro­cesses. The P53 sensors op­er­ate without con­tact and ac­cur­ately de­tect sol­id, li­quid, and pasty me­dia.

In­teg­rated tem­per­at­ure com­pens­a­tion

The fully en­cap­su­lated stain­less-steel hous­ing provides re­li­able pro­tec­tion against steam, dust, and mois­ture, mak­ing the series par­tic­u­larly suit­able for use in harsh in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments. Avail­able with hous­ing dia­met­ers of Ø18 mm and Ø30 mm, the series cov­ers meas­ur­ing ranges from 150 to 1500 mm and is de­signed for am­bi­ent tem­per­at­ures of up to 70 °C. Ana­log or switch­ing out­puts, along with in­teg­rated tem­per­at­ure com­pens­a­tion, make these sensors ideal for a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions, in­clud­ing filling and pack­aging sys­tems, co­agu­lat­ors, and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al pro­duc­tion lines.
 

The JUMO fa­vo­TRON is a com­pact PID con­trol­ler for entry-level ap­plic­a­tions. It is a two-state and three-state con­trol­ler with pro­gram con­trol­ler func­tion, auto­t­un­ing, and uni­ver­sal meas­ure­ment in­put of­fers a mod­ern and power­ful solu­tion for a wide vari­ety of pro­cesses. The device’s high de­gree of con­trol qual­ity en­sures ef­fi­cient and re­li­able pro­cesses in the food and bever­age in­dustry, wa­ter and wastewa­ter treat­ment, ther­mo­pro­cess tech­no­logy, and HVAC ap­plic­a­tions.

An in­tu­it­ive user in­ter­face with plain text dis­play in 4 lan­guages (Eng­lish, Ger­man, French, and Span­ish) en­ables quick and straight­for­ward op­er­a­tion, para­met­er­iz­a­tion, and con­fig­ur­a­tion. As a res­ult, the user re­quires sig­ni­fic­antly less time. Key high­lights are the simple con­fig­ur­a­tion via the USB-C setup in­ter­face as well as the fast and se­cure cabling us­ing spring ter­min­als with PUSH IN tech­no­logy. The in­teg­rated ser­vice and op­er­at­ing hours counter sup­ports pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance plan­ning and min­im­izes down­time.

Yokogawa Elec­tric an­nounces the re­lease of the OpreX™ Pres­sure Trans­mit­ter EJX S Series as the suc­cessor to its core EJX A lineup of plant field in­stru­ments. Build­ing on the proven sil­ic­on res­on­ant sensor tech­no­logy the EJX S Series of­fers en­hance­ments in ac­cur­acy, long-term sta­bil­ity, and dur­ab­il­ity that en­sure stable plant op­er­a­tions and im­prove main­ten­ance ef­fi­ciency.

Im­proved ac­cur­acy and sta­bil­ity 

The ac­cur­acy of the trans­mit­ters is in a range of ±0.025%, with op­tion­al spe­cific­a­tion code /HAC. The series of­fers a high long-term sta­bil­ity (±0.1% per 20 years) and range­ab­il­ity of up to 400:1. HART and PROFINET com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­to­cols are sup­por­ted. With an IP68 dust­proof and wa­ter­proof rat­ing, com­pli­ance with SIL2 re­quire­ments, and en­hanced noise im­munity, the EJX S Series is even more re­li­able and ro­bust. In ad­di­tion, a new col­or back­lit graph­ic dis­play sig­ni­fic­antly im­proves vis­ib­il­ity of pro­cess vari­ables and device status in­form­a­tion.

Stream­lined spe­cific­a­tions for re­duced costs

Com­pli­ance with a vari­ety of ex­plo­sion-proof stand­ards, sup­port for dual power con­nec­tions, and ad­vanced dia­gnost­ic func­tions are all provided as stand­ard fea­tures with the EJX S Series, al­low­ing these devices to cov­er a wider range of ap­plic­a­tions and re­du­cing the need for the or­der­ing of products with spe­cif­ic mod­el and suf­fix codes. Fur­ther­more, a mod­u­lar design al­lows parts re­place­ment and main­ten­ance work to be car­ried out eas­ily and ef­fi­ciently. To­geth­er, these char­ac­ter­ist­ics help to im­prove main­ten­ance ef­fi­ciency and re­duce in­vent­ory costs. In ad­di­tion, the LCD col­or dis­play sup­ports NAMUR NE107-com­pli­ant alert in­dic­a­tions, en­abling in­tu­it­ive re­cog­ni­tion of device status even from a dis­tance. This fa­cil­it­ates faster on-site in­spec­tions.

The OpreX Pres­sure Trans­mit­ter EJX S Series pres­sure trans­mit­ters were de­signed to re­duce en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact over the en­tire product li­fe­cycle. CO₂ emis­sions have been sig­ni­fic­antly re­duced dur­ing the pro­duc­tion pro­cess, help­ing cus­tom­ers re­duce their Scope 3 emis­sions. A mod­u­lar design al­lows for easy dis­as­sembly and dis­pos­al con­trib­utes to the op­tim­iz­a­tion of cus­tom­ers' main­ten­ance parts and in­vent­ory, as well as a re­duc­tion in en­vir­on­ment­al im­pact after use.
 

Re­solve Op­tics is a lead­ing de­veloper of high-tem­per­at­ure en­do­scopes design op­tim­ised to work in con­junc­tion with high-tem­per­at­ure cam­er­as. Provid­ing a live view in­to op­er­at­ing boil­ers, fur­naces and pro­cess plant – these high tem­per­at­ure en­do­scop­ic ima­ging sys­tems de­liv­er the peace of mind of con­stant video mon­it­or­ing to help you stay one step ahead of costly delays. Re­solve Op­tics has sup­plied sensor op­tim­ised en­do­scopes to non-in­vas­ively mon­it­or high tem­per­at­ure pro­cesses in­clud­ing in­cin­er­a­tion, re­cyc­ling, smelt­ing and chem­ic­al man­u­fac­tur­ing. These high tem­per­at­ure en­do­scopes al­low you to min­im­ize down­time and in­vest in a solu­tion that will last many years, even in the harshest con­di­tions.

Op­er­at­ing un­der pres­sure

Cus­tom en­do­scopes can also im­prove safety by en­abling re­mote visu­al in­spec­tion of haz­ard­ous, high-tem­per­at­ure pro­cesses without re­quir­ing hu­man entry or ex­tens­ive equip­ment dis­as­sembly. Re­cently, Re­solve Op­tics de­veloped an en­do­scope for a high tem­per­at­ure SWIR cam­era used to in­spect the blades in­side an op­er­a­tion­al gas tur­bine en­gine. To en­able in­spec­tion dur­ing gas tur­bine op­er­a­tion re­quired that this cus­tom en­do­scope had to op­er­ate up to 950°C and 150PSI pres­sure at its tip and be able to with­stand severe vi­bra­tion.
 

The fer­til­izer in­dustry lives in a per­man­ent bal­an­cing act. It must feed the world while cut­ting its own con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. Am­mo­nia, the lifeblood of mod­ern ag­ri­cul­ture, is both the solu­tion and the prob­lem. Without it, food se­cur­ity would col­lapse. With it, vast amounts of en­ergy are burned, mainly in the ser­vice of com­pres­sion.

Cent­ral to the pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia is the Haber–Bosch pro­cess, a cata­lyt­ic re­ac­tion that con­verts ni­tro­gen and hy­dro­gen in­to am­mo­nia at high tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure. De­veloped in the early 20th cen­tury, it uses an iron-based cata­lyst to drive the gases to re­act ef­fi­ciently, and des­pite count­less in­cre­ment­al im­prove­ments, the fun­da­ment­als have re­mained un­changed for more than a cen­tury. Nat­ur­al gas is stripped for its hy­dro­gen, ni­tro­gen is pulled from the air, and the two are com­bined un­der im­mense pres­sure to cre­ate am­mo­nia. That pres­sure is gen­er­ated by in­dus­tri­al com­pressors the size of houses, run­ning con­tinu­ously, day and night. The com­pressors are amongst the highest con­sumers of elec­tri­city of any oth­er piece of ma­chinery on the site, and their ap­pet­ite trans­lates dir­ectly in­to car­bon emis­sions when the power comes from fossil fuels.

For years, these ma­chines were over­looked in the de­bate on de­car­bon­isa­tion. The fo­cus was else­where, on the prom­ise of car­bon cap­ture, on switch­ing to re­new­able hy­dro­gen, and on oth­er grand new pro­cesses. Yet hid­den in plain sight was an op­por­tun­ity that could de­liv­er mean­ing­ful sav­ings today: the per­form­ance of com­pressors them­selves.

Why com­pressors mat­ter

The main air com­pressor plays a crit­ic­al role in am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion. Po­si­tioned at the front end of the air sep­ar­a­tion unit, it pulls in oxy­gen and ni­tro­gen, set­ting the pace for the pro­cess. These are not small ma­chines. They re­quire tens of thou­sands of horsepower to op­er­ate, and they run for years without a break. Even a mar­gin­al im­prove­ment can de­liv­er strik­ing sav­ings in large-scale am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion. Tests on MAN En­ergy Solu­tions, now Ever­l­lence, cent­ri­fu­gal com­pressors showed that cut­ting in­tern­al leak­age with ad­vanced labyrinth seals de­livered about a one per­cent per­form­ance gain, sav­ing roughly $300,000 in elec­tri­city over a single com­pressor’s li­fe­cycle. A labyrinth seal is a pre­ci­sion-en­gin­eered ring of in­ter­lock­ing ridges that cre­ates a tor­tu­ous path for gas or flu­id, min­im­ising leak­age and main­tain­ing pres­sure in high-speed ro­tat­ing equip­ment such as com­pressors and tur­bines.

Across a fleet run­ning 24/7, that fig­ure com­pounds in­to mil­lions. A one per­cent drop in pro­ductiv­ity may sound trivi­al in a meet­ing room. In the real world, it can mean mil­lions of kilo­watt hours wasted over a dec­ade.

That is why the num­bers start to mat­ter. A one to two per­cent gain in com­pressor per­form­ance trans­lates to an­nu­al sav­ings of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, and more im­port­antly, thou­sands of tonnes of car­bon di­ox­ide avoided. Mul­tiply that across an in­stalled base of fer­til­izer plants world­wide, and the po­ten­tial be­comes ob­vi­ous.

Com­pressors may not be a glam­or­ous sub­ject, but they are im­port­ant to man­age costs, re­duce emis­sions, and im­prove re­li­ab­il­ity. Ig­nore them, and the in­dustry leaves money on the ta­ble and emis­sions in the at­mo­sphere.

Why has the change been slow

Re­li­ab­il­ity has al­ways been para­mount. In fer­til­izer pro­duc­tion, a break­down can shut down an en­tire plant, breach con­tracts, and wipe out out­put. That risk keeps en­gin­eers loy­al to proven designs. Metal­lic labyrinth seals, en­shrined in Amer­ic­an Pet­ro­leum In­sti­tute (API) stand­ards, have been the de­fault choice for dec­ades, trus­ted to keep com­pressors run­ning un­der pun­ish­ing con­di­tions. Yet the very de­pend­ab­il­ity of these seals has slowed the search for al­tern­at­ives, even as en­ergy costs and emis­sions sharpen the case for ef­fi­ciency gains.

The trade-off was ac­cep­ted. Met­al seals re­quire large clear­ances to avoid galling or ro­tor dam­age dur­ing up­set con­di­tions. Those clear­ances mean in­ef­fi­ciency, with gas leak­ing back across the pro­file. 

Oc­ca­sion­ally, the cor­ro­sion prob­lem forced a change. Hy­dro­gen sulf­ide, chlor­ine or mer­cury in pro­cess streams would at­tack alu­mini­um, and op­er­at­ors would switch to stain­less steel. That solved the cor­ro­sion is­sue but brought oth­er head­aches: more hard sur­faces that threatened cata­stroph­ic ro­tor dam­age. Op­tim­isa­tion barely be­came part of the dis­cus­sion.

This well-es­tab­lished cau­tion is un­der­stand­able. The fer­til­izer sec­tor draws heav­ily on prac­tices from the hy­dro­car­bon and chem­ic­al in­dus­tries, where “fail­ure is not an op­tion” is more than a slo­gan. API spe­cific­a­tions serve as the rule book, and pro­cure­ment teams have strong in­cent­ives to choose equip­ment with a long op­er­at­ing re­cord rather than un­tested al­tern­at­ives.

The ma­ter­i­als shift

Change came through ma­ter­i­als sci­ence. En­gin­eers de­veloped ad­vanced ther­mo­plastics with a com­bin­a­tion of prop­er­ties that metals could not match. These new poly­mers were chem­ic­ally in­ert, res­ist­ant to high tem­per­at­ures, and cru­cially, they did not gall. That al­lowed for tight­er clear­ances, which in com­pressor lan­guage meant less leak­age and more out­put. 

Greene Tweed’s Ar­lon® 4020 and re­lated high-per­form­ance PEEK com­pos­ites gave en­gin­eers con­fid­ence to look bey­ond tra­di­tion­al met­al seals. De­veloped by Greene Tweed for de­mand­ing tur­boma­chinery, the ma­ter­i­al of­fers ex­cep­tion­al chem­ic­al res­ist­ance, shrug­ging off cor­ros­ive gases such as H₂S, mer­cury, and chlor­ine. It ab­sorbs vir­tu­ally no mois­ture, res­ists swell­ing, and main­tains its shape un­der con­tinu­ous high-tem­per­at­ure and high-pres­sure loads. Those prop­er­ties al­low de­sign­ers to tight­en clear­ances and re­duce leak­age without gambling with re­li­ab­il­ity. For the first time, ef­fi­ciency gains could be cap­tured without sac­ri­fi­cing peace of mind.

The claims were not mar­ket­ing fluff. Fi­nite ele­ment ana­lys­is and com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dy­nam­ics, that ori­gin­ated in aerospace, were turned on com­pressors. Every pro­file was mod­elled. Labor­at­ory rigs sub­jec­ted the seals to cycles of heat and pres­sure. Gradu­ally, the num­bers held up.

Prov­ing it in prac­tice

The break­through came when com­pressor OEMs put the the­ory un­der their own mi­cro­scopes. A pro­gramme with Ever­l­lence, be­came the in­flec­tion point. On the test stand in Ger­many, leak­age across metal­lic seals was meas­ured at around four per­cent. With ther­mo­plastic seals in place, that fig­ure halved.

It was not just the­ory. Field de­ploy­ments las­ted for nearly a dec­ade. When seals were fi­nally in­spec­ted, the ver­dict was start­ling: al­most no wear, no dam­age to the ro­tor, no evid­ence of dis­tress. Main­ten­ance cycles that once de­faul­ted to five years could now stretch to ten.

The eco­nom­ics were equally clear. A one-and-a-half per­cent im­prove­ment in en­ergy use trans­lates to $30,000 a year saved on a single com­pressor. Throughout its life, the gain was ap­prox­im­ately $300,000. For a piece of equip­ment that is un­avoid­able, the busi­ness case is ob­vi­ous.

For fer­til­izer pro­du­cers us­ing the same in­teg­rally geared com­pressors as those in the en­ergy and chem­ic­al in­dus­tries, the les­son is trans­fer­able. They can use the same com­pon­ents that can be spe­cified in new builds or ret­ro­fit­ted in­to ex­ist­ing ma­chines for sim­il­ar res­ults.

At­ti­tudes began to shift. What had once been a last-ditch op­tion for cor­ro­sion res­ist­ance be­came a pro­act­ive strategy for ef­fi­cient com­pressor per­form­ance. En­gin­eers who in­sisted on main­tain­ing safety clear­ances began to re­quest tight­er tol­er­ances to cap­ture the gains. OEMs built com­pressors around the new ma­ter­i­als. End users spe­cified them as stand­ard rather than ex­cep­tions.

This was more than a tech­nic­al change. It marked a shift in in­dustry prac­tices. The fer­til­izer in­dustry began to ac­cept that ef­fi­ciency and re­li­ab­il­ity could co­ex­ist. The evid­ence, ac­cu­mu­lated over a dec­ade of test data and field ex­per­i­ence, had be­come too sol­id to ig­nore.

Di­git­al­isa­tion brings an­oth­er lay­er

At the same time, plants were be­com­ing smarter. Sensors and ana­lyt­ics were spread­ing across the shop floor, de­liv­er­ing streams of vi­bra­tion and tem­per­at­ure data. Pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance sys­tems began to re­place cal­en­dar-based ser­vi­cing with con­di­tion-based in­ter­ven­tions.

Ad­vanced ma­ter­i­als fit neatly in­to this en­vir­on­ment. Seals that last nine years in­stead of five give pre­dict­ive mod­els bet­ter data to work with. Mon­it­or­ing sys­tems con­firm their con­di­tion, ex­tend­ing in­ter­vals fur­ther. The two trends re­in­force each oth­er: di­git­al tools un­lock more value from longer-last­ing com­pon­ents, and those com­pon­ents make pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance more prof­it­able. For op­er­at­ors, the res­ult is few­er sur­prises, few­er out­ages, and a smooth­er re­la­tion­ship between emis­sions tar­gets and pro­duc­tion sched­ules.

The world out­side the plant gate is chan­ging just as quickly. Gov­ern­ments are set­ting stricter tar­gets for car­bon re­duc­tion. In­vestors are de­mand­ing trans­par­ent path­ways to net zero. Cus­tom­ers in ag­ri­cul­ture and bey­ond are be­gin­ning to ask about the car­bon in­tens­ity of fer­til­izers.

In that cli­mate, per­form­ance stops be­ing a nice-to-have and be­comes part of the com­pli­ance toolkit. A one per­cent im­prove­ment may not sound like much at first glance, but when mul­ti­plied across an in­stalled base, it helps meet 2030 or 2050 tar­gets. They also demon­strate a ser­i­ous will­ing­ness to tackle emis­sions. Cost com­pet­it­ive­ness comes as an ad­ded ad­vant­age. En­ergy re­mains the largest vari­able in­put in fer­til­izer pro­duc­tion. A plant that con­sumes less en­ergy has a lower cost base, more re­si­li­ence against price spikes, and an ad­vant­age over rivals who ig­nore re­source op­tim­isa­tion.

The at­trac­tion is not lim­ited to new projects. Ret­ro­fit­ting has al­ways been the harder sell: op­er­at­ors worry about down­time, com­pat­ib­il­ity, and re-en­gin­eer­ing. Yet ther­mo­plastic seals can of­ten be ma­chined to the same di­men­sions as metal­lic pre­de­cessors. In many cases, they are a dir­ect swap.

In the early days, con­ser­vat­ive op­er­at­ors in­sisted on identic­al clear­ances. They wanted cor­ro­sion res­ist­ance without dis­turb­ing the bal­ance of the com­pressor. As con­fid­ence grew, those same op­er­at­ors began to re­quest en­gin­eered tol­er­ances, seek­ing the pro­ductiv­ity they had once over­looked.

It is an evol­u­tion rather than a re­volu­tion. Plants do not have to re­design com­pressors or en­dure ex­ten­ded out­ages. They can cap­ture ef­fi­ciency in the nat­ur­al rhythm of main­ten­ance cycles, pro­gress­ively de­car­bon­ising their op­er­a­tions without the drama of whole­sale re­place­ment.

Am­mo­nia’s fu­ture role

The role of am­mo­nia is ex­pand­ing and it is be­ing stud­ied as a mar­ine fuel, prom­ising car­bon-free com­bus­tion at sea. It is be­ing po­si­tioned as a hy­dro­gen car­ri­er, which is easi­er to trans­port and can be cracked back in­to hy­dro­gen at the point of use.

Both paths will de­mand more from com­pressors. Pres­sures will rise, chemistries will shift, life­times will stretch fur­ther. Ad­vanced ma­ter­i­als will not be op­tion­al; they will be crit­ic­al. Already, de­vel­op­ment work is un­der­way on seals de­signed for rap­id gas de­com­pres­sion and oth­er stresses unique to emer­ging en­ergy sys­tems.

For the fer­til­izer sec­tor, this is both a chal­lenge and an op­por­tun­ity. By ad­opt­ing ad­vanced ma­ter­i­als now, pro­du­cers not only de­car­bon­ise their cur­rent op­er­a­tions but also pre­pare for the role of am­mo­nia in the glob­al en­ergy trans­ition.

The fer­til­izer in­dustry can­not avoid its dual chal­lenge. It must pro­duce more and emit less. There will be no single solu­tion. Car­bon cap­ture will play a role, as will re­new­able hy­dro­gen and pro­cess re­design. But along­side those head­line projects, in­cre­ment­al meas­ures mat­ter.

Com­pressor per­form­ance is one of them. It may not be glam­or­ous, but it is prac­tic­al, proven, and read­ily avail­able today. Ad­vanced ma­ter­i­als show that re­li­ab­il­ity and ef­fi­ciency need not be trade-offs. The fin­an­cial and en­vir­on­ment­al case is clear.

The path to a low-car­bon fer­til­izer fu­ture will be paved with many steps, large and small. Com­pressors may not make the head­lines, but they will make a dif­fer­ence. The in­dustry that ig­nores them risks wast­ing both money and car­bon. The sec­tor that em­braces them gains a hid­den lever, one that pulls in the right dir­ec­tion for both com­pet­it­ive­ness and cli­mate.
 

Koll­mor­gen in­tro­duces the AKME Series of haz­ard­ous loc­a­tion servo mo­tors with ATEX and IECEx cer­ti­fic­a­tion for use in loc­a­tions that re­quire Zone 2 and Zone 22 rat­ings. Built on the proven per­form­ance, qual­ity and re­li­ab­il­ity of the AKM servo mo­tor plat­form, the AKME series al­lows ma­chine build­ers to achieve new stand­ards of com­pact, ver­sat­ile per­form­ance in en­vir­on­ments in­volving ig­nit­able gases or dusts.

AKME servo mo­tors are avail­able in IEC frame sizes 2-7 to work with drives powered by 48, 75 Vdc, 120, 240 or 400 Vac and speeds up to 5,000 rpm. The series sup­ports a wide range of feed­back op­tions, in­clud­ing re­solv­er, SFD-M, Com­Coder, EnD­at, Hiper­face and BiSS B op­tions. The mo­tors are also ideally matched with AKD, AKD2G and Koll­mor­gen Es­sen­tials™ (KED) servo drives to de­liv­er op­tim­um torque dens­ity, re­spons­ive­ness and pre­ci­sion in a com­plete, fea­ture-rich mo­tion solu­tion. The AKME servo mo­tors give more op­tions to en­gin­eers than ever be­fore to fit a more cost-ef­fect­ive, HazLoc mo­tor to their Zone 2 and Zone 22 ma­chine ap­plic­a­tions.

Glob­ally cer­ti­fied for haz­ard­ous en­vir­on­ments

The AKME series joins Koll­mor­gen’s ex­ist­ing port­fo­lio of mo­tors for haz­ard­ous en­vir­on­ments with ex­tens­ive glob­al cer­ti­fic­a­tions. It has earned ATEX cer­ti­fic­a­tion un­der the European Uni­on safety stand­ard for equip­ment used in po­ten­tially ex­plos­ive en­vir­on­ments, in­clud­ing gas Zone 2 and dust Zone 22 loc­a­tions. It has also earned IECEx cer­ti­fic­a­tion un­der the glob­al stand­ard that en­sures the safety of equip­ment and per­son­nel in ex­plos­ive at­mo­spheres, as es­tab­lished by the In­ter­na­tion­al Elec­tro­tech­nic­al Com­mis­sion (IEC).
 

The Krohne H250 M40 vari­able area flow­met­er re­ceives new SIL 2 cer­ti­fic­a­tions, set­ting a new bench­mark for func­tion­al safety of vari­able area flow­met­ers in the pro­cess in­dustry: cer­ti­fic­a­tion body ex­ida has awar­ded SIL 2 cer­ti­fic­a­tion to the device’s lim­it switches and, for the first time, to the device's 4...20 mA ana­logue out­put.

The cer­ti­fic­a­tion does not only in­clude the ran­dom fail­ure rates of the hard­ware, which were de­term­ined by an FMEDA and con­firmed with field data, but also proof of the sys­tem­at­ic cap­ab­il­ity of the soft­ware and hard­ware due to suit­able de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses in ac­cord­ance with the re­quire­ments of IEC 61508:2010 Part 1-3. It re­places the pre­vi­ous man­u­fac­turer’s de­clar­a­tion (SIL 2 for lim­it switches and SIL 1 for the 4…20 mA out­put).

Re­li­able meas­ure­ment for li­quids and gases

The H250 M40 is the stand­ard vari­able area flow­met­er for ap­plic­a­tions in the pro­cess in­dus­tries and OEM sec­tor. It com­bines re­li­able meas­ure­ment of li­quids and gases with mod­ern com­mu­nic­a­tion and dia­gnost­ic func­tions. Ad­di­tion­al elec­tron­ic mod­ules can be ad­ded or re­placed at any time without in­ter­rupt­ing the pro­cess, al­low­ing the device’s func­tion­al­ity to be ad­ap­ted to new re­quire­ments – from ana­logue flow meas­ure­ment without aux­il­i­ary power to full di­git­al in­teg­ra­tion in­to field­bus sys­tems.

Ex­treme tem­per­at­ures and ag­gress­ive me­dia

The ro­bust all-met­al flow­met­er is avail­able in a wide range of ma­ter­i­als and con­fig­ur­a­tions and is suit­able for de­mand­ing pro­cess con­di­tions, in­clud­ing high pres­sures (up to 1000 barg / 14,500 psig), ex­treme tem­per­at­ures (–196…+400 °C / –320…+752 °F), and ag­gress­ive me­dia. It can also be in­stalled ho­ri­zont­ally or in ver­tic­al down­flow lines up to DN150 / 6"". Vari­ants for hy­gien­ic ap­plic­a­tions fur­ther en­hance the port­fo­lio. Ad­di­tion­al device and ap­plic­a­tion dia­gnostics – such as de­tec­tion of float block­ages, gas com­pres­sion os­cil­la­tions of the float or pulsat­ing flows – help to im­prove op­er­a­tion­al safety in de­mand­ing plant en­vir­on­ments and ex­tend the life­time of the device if cor­rect­ive meas­ures are taken in the ap­plic­a­tion on the basis of theses dia­gnostics.