Mer­ck and Siemens have signed a new Memor­andum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU), ex­tend­ing their stra­tegic part­ner­ship to ac­cel­er­ate di­git­al trans­form­a­tion in the life sci­ence in­dustry by con­nect­ing di­git­al and phys­ic­al products. The agree­ment fo­cuses on de­liv­er­ing in­teg­rated soft­ware solu­tions, sys­tems and con­sum­ables that har­ness auto­ma­tion, data and AI to con­nect drug dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. This agree­ment marks the first joint use of tech­no­logy ac­quired by Siemens as part of the ac­quis­i­tion of Dot­mat­ics that was com­pleted in Ju­ly 2025.

Faster paths to ther­apies

“Through this col­lab­or­a­tion with Siemens, we are open­ing new pos­sib­il­it­ies for sci­ent­ists to move faster from an idea in the lab to a ther­apy for pa­tients,” said Jean­Charles Wirth, Mem­ber of the Ex­ec­ut­ive Board and CEO Life Sci­ence, Mer­ck. “By com­bin­ing our strengths, we aim to change how sci­ence ad­vances, un­lock­ing new ways to ac­cel­er­ate sci­entif­ic pro­gress.”

“We are part­ner­ing with Mer­ck to give sci­ent­ists around the world the in­stru­ments to speed up the de­vel­op­ment of life-sav­ing med­ic­a­tion”, said Cedrik Neike, Mem­ber of the Man­aging Board at Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens Di­git­al In­dus­tries. “Every few years the cost for de­vel­op­ing a new drug is doub­ling. Data, AI and di­git­al­iz­a­tion are key to break this paradigm. We are con­nect­ing every step of drug de­vel­op­ment through a di­git­al back­bone – so that data flows seam­lessly, in­sights emerge faster, and med­ic­a­tion reaches the pa­tients faster.”

One en­vir­on­ment for data-driv­en de­cision-mak­ing

The col­lab­or­a­tion will fo­cus on di­git­al-first solu­tions that close work­flow gaps in drug dis­cov­ery and bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing by in­teg­rat­ing Mer­ck’s soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice (SaaS) products with Siemens’ di­git­al eco­sys­tem. Ini­tial pi­lot projects in­clude mak­ing Mer­ck’s AI tools and di­git­al ap­plic­a­tions avail­able in Luma, Siemens' Sci­entif­ic In­tel­li­gence Plat­form ac­quired as part of Dot­mat­ics. This will give sci­ent­ists a single en­vir­on­ment that links product or­der­ing with im­me­di­ate ac­cess to the di­git­al tools and in­sights they need to make faster, data-driv­en de­cisions.

Build­ing on these projects, Siemens and Mer­ck will pur­sue ad­di­tion­al joint projects and ex­plore deep­er in­teg­ra­tion over time. These ini­ti­at­ives in­clude co-de­vel­op­ing smarter data man­age­ment tools and in­tu­it­ive in­ter­faces that make ad­vanced pro­cesses easi­er for sci­ent­ists to use. The part­ner­ship is also eval­u­at­ing di­git­al mar­ket­places that would give cus­tom­ers stream­lined ac­cess to com­ple­ment­ary tech­no­lo­gies and ser­vices.

To­geth­er, Mer­ck and Siemens see di­git­al in­nov­a­tion as cent­ral to the fu­ture of life sci­ences. This part­ner­ship is de­signed to set a new stand­ard for di­git­al trans­form­a­tion, giv­ing sci­ent­ists and man­u­fac­tur­ers the tools to de­liv­er break­throughs faster. It also builds on earli­er MoUs between the two com­pan­ies in smart man­u­fac­tur­ing, re­flect­ing a shared com­mit­ment to ad­van­cing in­nov­a­tion across the in­dustry.
 

This part­ner­ship brings to­geth­er two es­tab­lished in­dustry lead­ers. Pep­perl+Fuchs’ GMP-com­pli­ant VisuN­et HMI sys­tems en­able the op­er­a­tion of PAS-X MES, Körber’s world-lead­ing Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ex­e­cu­tion Sys­tem. The two com­pan­ies have jointly de­veloped a re­com­mend­a­tion that sig­ni­fic­antly sim­pli­fies in­stall­a­tion and rol­lout. For man­u­fac­tur­ers in the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al, bi­otech, and cell and gene ther­apy sec­tors, this means easi­er sys­tem im­ple­ment­a­tion and re­duced manu­al con­fig­ur­a­tion ef­fort.

For sta­tion­ary and mo­bile units

The VisuN­et product fam­ily from Pep­perl+Fuchs cov­ers a wide range of HMI solu­tions for highly reg­u­lated, hy­gien­ic, and haz­ard­ous pro­duc­tion en­vir­on­ments – in­clud­ing Zone 1/21. In ad­di­tion, Pep­perl+Fuchs of­fers mo­bile devices and smart­phones in ex­plo­sion-proof designs, spe­cific­ally de­veloped for safe use in haz­ard­ous areas, en­abling flex­ible data cap­ture and mo­bile com­mu­nic­a­tion. The VisuN­et HMI sys­tems them­selves are mod­u­lar, al­low­ing com­pon­ents such as dis­play or com­put­ing units to be re­placed quickly and eas­ily on-site. They are de­signed for both sta­tion­ary and mo­bile use in clean­rooms and haz­ard­ous areas. Peri­pher­al devices such as hand­held scan­ners, an­ti­mi­cro­bi­al key­boards, and RFID read­ers fur­ther sup­port se­cure and ef­fi­cient user au­then­tic­a­tion and op­er­a­tion.

“With Pep­perl+Fuchs, our cus­tom­ers gain a part­ner that not only de­liv­ers tech­no­lo­gic­al ex­cel­lence but also brings dec­ades of ex­per­i­ence in highly reg­u­lated pro­duc­tion en­vir­on­ments,” said Lars Hornung, Seni­or Prin­cip­al Al­li­ances & Tech­no­logy Part­ners Soft­ware at Körber Busi­ness Area Pharma. “The com­bin­a­tion of PAS-X MES and VisuN­et HMI sys­tems en­hances pro­cess safety, ef­fi­ciency, and flex­ib­il­ity – even un­der the most de­mand­ing pro­duc­tion con­di­tions.”

“We are de­lighted to have Körber, the lead­ing MES pro­vider, as a part­ner at our side,” ad­ded Yan­nick Klein, Product Mar­ket­ing Man­ager at Pep­perl+Fuchs. “Our vis­ion is to provide plant op­er­at­ors with a solu­tion that en­ables even more seam­less in­ter­ac­tion between VisuN­et HMIs and PAS-X MES, sim­pli­fies user work­flows, and en­sures re­li­able long-term in­teg­ra­tion.”
 

“The fact that we are once again among the fi­nal­ists for the Ger­man Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Award con­firms our con­sist­ent path to­ward sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion – both in our own ac­tions and in what we im­ple­ment to­geth­er with our cus­tom­ers. This re­cog­ni­tion mo­tiv­ates us to con­tin­ue act­ively shap­ing our re­spons­ib­il­ity,” shares Ju­lia Schempp, Cor­por­ate Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Of­ficer of the En­dress+Haus­er Group.

Part­ner for sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion 

Be­ing a part­ner to the pro­cess in­dustry, En­dress+Haus­er ap­proaches sus­tain­ab­il­ity hol­ist­ic­ally: products, solu­tions and ser­vices in meas­ure­ment and auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy sup­port cus­tom­ers world­wide in us­ing re­sources ef­fi­ciently, re­du­cing emis­sions and mak­ing pro­cesses safer and more en­vir­on­ment­ally friendly. At the same time, as a fam­ily-owned com­pany, En­dress+Haus­er’s sus­tain­able ap­proach to its own pro­cesses is at the core of its long-term think­ing, throughout gen­er­a­tions. The com­pany’s green­house gas tar­gets, in­clud­ing its com­mit­ment to reach­ing net-zero green­house gas emis­sions across the value chain by 2050, have been val­id­ated by the Sci­ence Based Tar­gets ini­ti­at­ive – one of many de­clared tar­gets in its sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategy.

Re­cog­ni­tion for eco­lo­gic­al and so­cial com­mit­ment

The GSA aims to pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in key sec­tors of so­ci­ety. Since 2008, the award has been re­cog­niz­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives from busi­ness, sci­ence and the pub­lic sec­tor in 100 in­dus­tries for their con­tri­bu­tions to the sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion of the Ger­man eco­nomy. The award is based on de­mand­ing as­sess­ments. Trans­par­ent pro­cesses and ob­ject­ive cri­ter­ia al­low the nom­in­ated com­pan­ies and or­gan­iz­a­tions to fur­ther im­prove their sus­tain­ab­il­ity per­form­ance.  

This year’s award win­ner will be an­nounced at the Ger­man Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Day on 5 Decem­ber 2025 in Düsseldorf.
 

The pi­lot test demon­strates MOL’s abil­ity to con­vert cir­cu­lar feed­stock, namely post-con­sumer plastic waste-based feed­stock in­to high-qual­ity poly­ethyl­ene (PE) and polypro­pyl­ene (PP). This marks a ma­jor step in MOL Group’s SHAPE TO­MOR­ROW strategy to in­teg­rate cir­cu­lar eco­nomy in­to pro­duc­tion and es­tab­lish it­self as a lead­er in sus­tain­able pet­ro­chem­ic­als in Cent­ral and East­ern Europe.

“This suc­cess­ful test shows that MOL Group can now pro­cess cir­cu­lar feed­stocks ac­cord­ing to ISCC PLUS cer­ti­fied pro­cess, turn­ing plastic waste in­to new, high-value products,” said Péter Császár, Seni­or Vice Pres­id­ent, MOL Group Chem­ic­als. “It is a sig­ni­fic­ant step to­wards sus­tain­able pet­ro­chem­ic­als and strengthens our po­s­i­tion as a lead­ing cir­cu­lar eco­nomy play­er in Cent­ral and East­ern Europe.”

Dur­ing the pi­lot, cir­cu­lar feed­stock based on post-con­sumer waste was in­tro­duced to MOL’s steam crack­er. This pro­cess al­lows the pro­duc­tion of cir­cu­lar-based monomers (the smal­lest build­ing block of plastics) and then con­verts them in­to poly­mers. Dur­ing the pro­cess, the mass bal­ance ap­proach was ap­plied, a meth­od­o­logy that tracks and ac­counts for cir­cu­lar ma­ter­i­al when pro­cessed to­geth­er with tra­di­tion­al in­puts, en­sur­ing the bal­ance of the total pro­cess flows.

This achieve­ment fol­lows the ISCC PLUS cer­ti­fic­a­tion, which was achieved by MOL Pet­ro­chem­ic­als in Tiszaújváros and Slov­n­aft in Brat­is­lava in 2024 for steam crack­er and poly­mer­iz­a­tion units. Max­im­iz­ing syn­er­gies with waste man­age­ment is cent­ral to MOL Group’s SHAPE TO­MOR­ROW strategy. The com­pany aims to con­tin­ue the trans­form­a­tion to­wards cir­cu­lar chem­ic­als and to util­ize up to 1.5 mil­lion tonnes of feed­stock for the en­ergy in­dustry by 2030. This is sup­por­ted by a grow­ing port­fo­lio that in­cludes a con­ces­sion to man­age mu­ni­cip­al waste in Hun­gary, past ac­quis­i­tions in plastics re­cyc­ling in Hun­gary and part­ner­ships to ad­vance chem­ic­al re­cyc­ling tech­no­lo­gies.

MOL Group will con­tin­ue test­ing ad­di­tion­al cir­cu­lar feed­stocks and de­vel­op­ing new pro­cesses to ex­pand the role of waste as a raw ma­ter­i­al for plastics pro­duc­tion.

About:
ISCC PLUS cer­ti­fic­a­tion is an ex­ten­sion of the ISCC EU stand­ard, of­fers a vol­un­tary path­way to cer­ti­fic­a­tion for a wide range of re­sources in the bioeconomy and cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. These in­clude bio­mass, waste, residues, non-bio­lo­gic­al re­new­able en­ergy sources, and re­cyc­lable car­bon ma­ter­i­als.
 

Mr. Lacour, who rep­res­ents the French or­gan­isa­tion EVOL­IS and serves as Pres­id­ent of the French pump man­u­fac­turer SOME­FLU and CHABOT, was un­an­im­ously elec­ted dur­ing Europump’s Gen­er­al As­sembly held in Prague in May. His ap­point­ment re­flects the strong con­fid­ence of Europump’s mem­ber­ship in his lead­er­ship and stra­tegic vis­ion for the in­dustry.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, out­go­ing Pres­id­ent Lub­os Mich­lik was warmly thanked for his com­mit­ment and achieve­ments, not­ably for launch­ing a com­pre­hens­ive strategy re­vi­sion and for es­tab­lish­ing a new spon­sor­ship pro­gram that will sup­port Europump’s long-term growth and vis­ib­il­ity.

In his ac­cept­ance re­marks, Al­ex­an­dre Lacour stated:
“I am hon­oured to take on this new role. My goal is to strengthen the voice of Europump at EU level, through fos­ter­ing a closer co­oper­a­tion and bet­ter know­ledge ex­change between our mem­bers across Europe. There is a lot at stake and we wish to re­main front run­ners in provid­ing sus­tain­able solu­tions in an EU reg­u­lat­ory en­vir­on­ment sup­port­ing com­pet­it­ive­ness, in­nov­a­tion and high qual­ity in­dus­tri­al products.”

Mr. Lacour will be sup­por­ted in his pres­id­ency by two Vice-Pres­id­ents, Markus Holmberg of Xy­lem, rep­res­ent­ing the Swedish Pump Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­ation (SWE­PUMP) and Jim Wall of Sulzer Ire­land, rep­res­ent­ing the Brit­ish Pump Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­ation (BPMA)

To­geth­er, they will guide Europump in ad­van­cing its mis­sion to pro­mote in­nov­a­tion, sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and in­dus­tri­al ex­cel­lence across the European pump in­dustry.

As CEO of Sella Controls, Carl Ramsden will assume overall responsibility of the company and will lead it alongside Chris Parr (CTO) and Eddy Turnock (CSO). Carl will also take on the responsibilities previously held by John Blackwell, who will retire as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) on October 31, 2025 after many years of service. 

With Carl Ramsden, the HIMA Group gains an experienced leader. He brings more than 20 years of international leadership and financial expertise from the industrial and technology sectors, including senior positions at a chemical company and an automation manufacturer. He has worked on both the manufacturing and end-customer fronts, giving him a comprehensive understanding of both perspectives within the industrial value chain.

Jörg de la Motte, CEO of HIMA Group, said: "We are delighted to have Carl Ramsden, an experienced and strategic manager, join us in this key position. With his expertise and clear value-driven leadership style, Carl Ramsden will further accelerate growth in the process and rail industries in the UK and Ireland and help us to further expand our global position as a solutions provider." 

Sella Controls was acquired by the HIMA Group in February 2023 following a long-standing partnership. Sella Controls now serves as the regional centre for the UK and Ireland and as the HIMA Group's global centre of excellence for railway activities, currently employing over 130 people at its Stockport and Ashby sites.

Li­queur pralines have a high-proof – as any­one who bites in­to them will im­me­di­ately no­tice. Less ob­vi­ous, but just as present, is al­co­hol in oth­er products, al­though not ne­ces­sar­ily for culin­ary reas­ons. For ex­ample, in­dus­tri­ally pro­duced baked goods of­ten con­tain ethyl al­co­hol with 70 to 96 per cent by volume for pre­ser­va­tion. The al­co­hol has an an­ti­mi­cro­bi­al ef­fect, in­hib­it­ing the growth of germs – and is there­fore an in­teg­ral part of the pro­duc­tion pro­cess.

In ad­di­tion to care­ful hand­ling and her­met­ic pack­aging, pre­ser­va­tion en­sures that an elab­or­ately man­u­fac­tured product be­comes safe for con­sump­tion – and does not pose a risk to con­sumers, for ex­ample through con­tam­in­a­tion. Un­like with some chocol­ate cre­ations, however, the al­co­hol is not ad­ded to the products for pre­ser­va­tion but rather ap­plied to them. After bak­ing, con­vey­or belts trans­port crois­sants or sponge cakes in­to a film tube. Spray nozzles loc­ated above the trans­port sys­tem spray the eth­an­ol onto the dough products. Al­though the al­co­hol con­tent in the sprayed baked goods var­ies, it is in a very low per­cent­age range.

Tools in­stead of manu­al work

So much for product pro­tec­tion on the baked goods them­selves. No mat­ter how soph­ist­ic­ated the pre­ser­va­tion tech­nique, it would be point­less if sub­sequent pro­cesses couldn’t pre­vent con­tam­in­a­tion just as ef­fect­ively. Ex­tern­al factors are at the top of the list of things to avoid: particles and germs need to be min­im­ised by man­u­fac­tur­ers. But how? The an­swer to this chal­len­ging ques­tion is auto­ma­tion and clean­ing. Where there is little hu­man in­ter­ven­tion in pro­cesses, the risk of con­tam­in­a­tion – for ex­ample, from particles en­ter­ing the pro­cess – is dra­mat­ic­ally re­duced. Ro­bots are there­fore tak­ing on trans­port and dis­tri­bu­tion tasks, es­pe­cially with­in large pack­aging lines, where the sheer volume of products is too much for hu­mans to handle.

Ro­bots can per­form these func­tions with great speed, lift­ing products from feed belts onto trans­port mod­ules or in­to trays, for ex­ample. These agile help­ers en­able hy­gien­ic pro­cesses thanks to their eas­ily ac­cess­ible, easy-to-clean sur­faces. There are also product-spe­cif­ic grip­ping or suc­tion tools made from food-safe ma­ter­i­als, which can now be eas­ily man­u­fac­tured us­ing 3D print­ing. Un­like hu­man hands, the devices al­ways pick up baked goods with the same force and speed. In ad­di­tion to the high level of pro­cess hy­giene, ro­bots also of­fer an­oth­er clear ad­vant­age: in­tact waffles, bis­cuits and crois­sants that show no de­fects such as break­age or pres­sure marks – caus­ing as little waste as pos­sible.

In the eye of the scan­ner

For this to suc­ceed, an­oth­er more in­con­spicu­ous tech­no­logy mon­it­ors qual­ity: sev­er­al scan­ners check the products at dif­fer­ent times, for ex­ample at the in­feed and out­feed. The sys­tems de­veloped primar­ily by Schubert are loc­ated above the con­vey­or belts and re­semble elong­ated lights un­der which the baked goods pass. Built-in cam­er­as in­spect every de­tail. De­pend­ing on the type, the scan­ners re­cord dif­fer­ent product char­ac­ter­ist­ics that sig­ni­fic­antly in­flu­ence product qual­ity.

In ad­di­tion to ori­ent­a­tion, col­our and shape – the main fo­cus of 2D scan­ners - 3D vari­ants also de­term­ine height, which is im­port­ant for filled products such as bis­cuits. All para­met­ers are spe­cified in ad­vance by the man­u­fac­tur­ers. The scan­ners simply com­pare the baked goods on the con­vey­or belts with these spe­cific­a­tions. Ad­vanced sys­tems such as those de­veloped by Schubert can eas­ily handle up to 5,000 units per minute. Should the val­ues not match, faulty products are not picked up and fall in­to des­ig­nated con­tain­ers at the end of the belt. A broken bis­cuit or an un­evenly shaped wafer nev­er even makes it in­to the flowpacks or trays – and nev­er reaches the shops.

Films for pro­tec­tion

Be­fore open­ing, the pack­aging nat­ur­ally has to form a per­fect bar­ri­er. Flow-wrapped pouches sup­port product safety: their bar­ri­er lay­er and seal ef­fect­ively keep out un­wanted for­eign bod­ies. De­pend­ing on the type of film used, dif­fer­ent lay­ers provide the re­quired bar­ri­er func­tion: in com­pos­ite films, for ex­ample, poly­am­ide (PA) blocks UV rays and mois­ture while re­tain­ing the fla­vours of sens­it­ive, fresh products. 

When it comes to product pro­tec­tion, mono­films are in no way in­feri­or to multi-ma­ter­i­al films. Single-lay­er films con­sist mainly of PP, which is both easy to heat and in­ex­pens­ive, with low for­eign sub­stance con­tent such as EVOH. The trans­par­ent plastic, which is ap­plied in li­quid form, cre­ates a high oxy­gen bar­ri­er. Pa­per films also have a plastic lay­er that can be ap­plied to the pa­per either as a wa­ter-sol­uble dis­per­sion or, in the case of lam­in­ates, as a lam­in­at­ing film to pro­mote seal­ing and bar­ri­er prop­er­ties.

In ad­di­tion to the film bar­ri­er, the seal it­self ful­fils a key pro­tect­ive func­tion, as it her­met­ic­ally seals the ends of the moul­ded plastic tube to the out­side. However, not all film op­tions can be sealed equally ef­fi­ciently: com­pos­ite films are made of more heat-res­ist­ant ma­ter­i­als than PP mono­films with a low melt­ing point. It is there­fore im­port­ant to ad­just the tem­per­at­ure of the seal­ing tools for single-ma­ter­i­al films to pre­vent burn­ing. Ul­tra­son­ic seal­ing provides a rem­edy here, as vi­bra­tions gen­er­ate fric­tion that gently heats the films. Al­tern­at­ive heat-seal­ing tech­no­lo­gies are also avail­able.

Cus­tom­ised seal­ing

Flowpack­ers from Schubert with box-mo­tion ul­tra­son­ic seal­ing tech­no­logy en­able this. The tech­no­logy is suit­able for very high seal­ing re­quire­ments, for ex­ample for re­cyc­lable flowpacks made from mono­films and even for pa­per-based films. In con­trast to rotary seal­ing sys­tems, box-mo­tion seal­ing tools move closed dur­ing seal­ing and syn­chron­ise with the film speed in its dir­ec­tion of travel. This en­sures op­tim­um seal­ing qual­ity with her­met­ic­ally sealed seams.

The res­ult is im­proved tight­ness and seal­ing qual­ity, es­pe­cially with thick­er or multi-layered ma­ter­i­als. To en­sure that the films de­liv­er what they prom­ise, lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers test them thor­oughly in ad­vance: Schubert uses vari­ous leak test­ing devices at its in-house tech­nic­al centre to de­term­ine the po­s­i­tion and pres­ence of pos­sible leaks and to rec­ti­fy them if ne­ces­sary.

Sta­bil­ity on the go

However, in­di­vidu­al baked goods in flowpacks rarely reach the mar­ket without ad­di­tion­al pack­aging. Trays and oth­er out­er pack­aging such as boxes help keep the of­ten del­ic­ate cre­ations stable – and there­fore safe – dur­ing trans­port. Boxes min­im­ise dam­age dur­ing trans­port. As men­tioned above, ro­bots as­sist with erect­ing, filling and clos­ing suit­able boxes. The agile ma­chines are fully auto­mated and en­sure con­sist­ent qual­ity of the trans­port and/or sales pack­aging.

Here, too, product safety is para­mount: car­ton­ing ma­chines from Schubert’s TLM series, for ex­ample, first erect blanks at a high cycle rate and glue them be­fore multi-ax­is ro­bots gently place the pre-pack­aged products in­to the car­tons. Here too, pre­cise move­ments and pre­cisely cal­ib­rated tools are also used. Both pro­cesses – erect­ing and load­ing – are car­ried out sep­ar­ately to en­sure that the baked goods are placed in their second pack­aging as quickly and safely as pos­sible. From there, they are trans­por­ted to the whole­sale or re­tail shelves.

Shelf life, qual­ity and safety are the res­ult of the in­ter­ac­tion of dif­fer­ent sys­tems. bey­ond the pack­aging, they en­sure that baked goods reach con­sumers in per­fect con­di­tion at all times. If one of the com­pon­ents is miss­ing, product and con­sumer safety are at risk. This makes in­teg­rated con­cepts that com­bine tech­no­lo­gies from a single source all the more im­port­ant – for pro­duc­tion that runs as smoothly as pos­sible and meets the highest stand­ards. 
 

With the first ex­pan­sion stage of the trans­port sys­tem, a fleet of cus­tom-built vehicles from the CUS­TOM MOVE series went in­to op­er­a­tion. Equipped with two roller con­vey­ors, the vehicles each trans­port two Euro pal­lets weigh­ing up to one ton and sup­ply the filling lines with empty pal­lets in three shifts. They also trans­port the fin­ished goods to the pal­let wrap­per and on to the stor­age areas. A char­ac­ter­ist­ic fea­ture of the solu­tion is the con­tact­less en­ergy trans­fer in the floor, which also serves as in­duct­ive track guid­ance – bat­tery op­er­a­tion is there­fore not ne­ces­sary. In 2019, the sys­tem was ex­pan­ded to in­clude ad­di­tion­al CUS­TOM MOVE vehicles. This ex­pan­sion also en­abled the trans­port of in­dus­tri­al pal­lets (1,200 x 1,000 mm) and the auto­mated con­nec­tion of the high-bay and cold stor­age ware­houses. 

The next ex­pan­sion stage fol­lowed in 2024: new vehicles open up ad­di­tion­al filling lines and stor­age areas. The plan­ning was based on de­tailed ma­ter­i­al flow sim­u­la­tions, which were used to de­term­ine the op­tim­al num­ber of vehicles and fu­ture trans­port volumes. "The sim­u­la­tions provide us with re­li­able key fig­ures to en­sure the per­form­ance of the over­all sys­tem even as re­quire­ments in­crease," ex­plains Clem­ens Woll­mann, sales en­gin­eer at ek ro­bot­ics. All vehicles are cus­tom-built, de­signed for high trans­port per­form­ance, short filling in­ter­vals, and the spe­cif­ic en­vir­on­ment­al con­di­tions of bever­age pro­duc­tion.

Cus­tom­ized trans­port solu­tions for the bever­age in­dustry

In the in­ter­na­tion­al bever­age in­dustry, ek ro­bot­ics primar­ily uses spe­cially man­u­fac­tured cus­tom vehicles in ad­di­tion to series vehicles for projects, in­clud­ing for Arla Foods, Ge­r­ol­stein­er, and Roy­al Swinkels Fam­ily Brew­ers (Bav­aria). To­geth­er, the sys­tems en­sure re­li­able ma­ter­i­al flows and trans­port more than one bil­lion liters of beer, juice, and milk an­nu­ally.
 

Dense phase con­vey­ing sys­tems are de­signed for ap­plic­a­tions where product qual­ity is para­mount. Wheth­er hand­ling powders, gran­ules, flakes, or pel­lets, Ger­icke’s dense phase con­vey­ing tech­no­logy en­sures min­im­al changes in bulk dens­ity and particle size dis­tri­bu­tion, while also re­du­cing the risk of de­mix­ing. This makes them ideal for in­dus­tries re­quir­ing gentle hand­ling of fra­gile or blen­ded ma­ter­i­als. A key ad­vant­age of the sys­tem lies in its use of pres­sure ves­sels without ro­tat­ing parts. This sig­ni­fic­antly re­duces main­ten­ance re­quire­ments and elim­in­ates the risk of met­al con­tam­in­a­tion. The sys­tems are com­pletely dust-tight, of­fer­ing a clean and safe solu­tion with no leak­age—un­like rotary valve sys­tems used in di­lute phase con­vey­ing. Op­er­at­ing at pres­sures of up to 6 barg, they en­able high solids load­ing and low gas con­sump­tion. This trans­lates in­to en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and re­duced op­er­a­tion­al costs. 

For a range of dif­fer­ent in­dus­tri­al needs

Ger­icke’s dense phase sys­tems are cap­able of con­vey­ing ma­ter­i­als over dis­tances of up to 500 metres and at ca­pa­cit­ies reach­ing 150 m³/h. They are avail­able in car­bon steel or stain­less steel, with ves­sel volumes ran­ging from 20 to 5,200 litres, and com­ply with PED 2014/68/EC, ASME, and GB 150 stand­ards. This flex­ib­il­ity makes them suit­able for a wide range of in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing food, chem­ic­al, and raw ma­ter­i­al pro­cessing. The sys­tems sup­port a vari­ety of ap­plic­a­tions, from gentle trans­fer of spray-dried products to de­mix­ing-free trans­port from mix­ers to filling lines, and even dir­ect re­act­or load­ing. They also ac­com­mod­ate batch weigh­ing, high-ca­pa­city hand­ling, in­ert gas con­vey­ing, and gentle un­load­ing from trucks or rail­cars.

Ger­icke of­fers three con­vey­ing modes tailored to spe­cif­ic needs: the “Dense­Flow” PHF sys­tem for con­tinu­ous lay­er trans­port at mod­er­ate gas ve­lo­cit­ies, the “Pulse­Flow” PTA sys­tem for pulsed plug con­vey­ing at low ve­lo­cit­ies, and the “PulseLine” PTA PL sys­tem, which en­hances long-dis­tance con­vey­ing with ex­tern­al air in­ject­ors for max­im­um pro­cess safety. With the ad­di­tion of the Ger­icke GUC -C con­trol­lers, these sys­tems are not only power­ful but also user-friendly, of­fer­ing in­tu­it­ive op­er­a­tion, pre­cise con­trol and link to SCADA sys­tems. 
 

Wan­gen Pumps has en­hanced the design of its trus­ted TWIN NG pump, sig­ni­fic­antly im­prov­ing its per­form­ance and re­du­cing main­ten­ance re­quire­ments. The res­ult is a proven hy­gien­ic pump­ing solu­tion that per­forms bet­ter for longer, boost­ing up­time and re­du­cing li­fe­cycle costs for cus­tom­ers in the food, phar­ma­ceut­ic­als and cos­met­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors. Twin NG screw pumps are de­signed to re­li­ably handle low to highly vis­cous, volat­ile, or gaseous products in ap­plic­a­tions that de­mand max­im­um hy­giene and ef­fi­ciency. Avail­able in sev­er­al sizes, the TWIN pumps of­fer a max­im­um flow rate of 200 m³/h and a max­im­um dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure of 25 bar. 

Im­proved TCO

The first design en­hance­ment in­volves re­pla­cing the Twin NG’s mo­tor coup­ling with a lan­tern coup­ling. This in­nov­at­ive fea­ture pre­vents pump shaft mis­align­ment, which re­duces stress and vi­bra­tion, thereby en­han­cing the lifespan of the pump and mo­tor. With less wear on pump shafts and bear­ings, main­ten­ance re­quire­ments are min­im­ised, and ser­vice in­ter­vals are ex­ten­ded. When main­ten­ance is ne­ces­sary, it is easi­er to per­form since no shaft align­ment is re­quired. This lan­tern design thus lowers the total cost of own­er­ship (TCO) and op­tim­ises up­time.

An­oth­er be­ne­fit of the new lan­tern design is smooth­er op­er­a­tion in de­mand­ing con­di­tions, par­tic­u­larly where the Twin NG is used to pump vis­cous and ab­ras­ive flu­ids un­der high pres­sure. The lan­tern coup­ling also en­ables bet­ter seal­ing ar­range­ments, min­im­iz­ing leaks and the risk of product con­tam­in­a­tion.

Bet­ter hy­giene

The second design im­prove­ment to the Twin NG pump is the op­tion to in­stall the pump us­ing hy­gien­ic ma­chine feet in­stead of a base plate. These feet are much easi­er to clean than tra­di­tion­al base plates be­cause they min­im­ise sur­faces where dirt and bac­teria can ac­cu­mu­late, greatly re­du­cing the risk of hid­den con­tam­in­a­tion as­so­ci­ated with sol­id base plates. The in­di­vidu­al feet also fa­cil­it­ate more ef­fect­ive wash-down and drain­age, without the need for elab­or­ate drain­age slopes and holes. 

Like the pump’s lan­tern coup­ling, the ma­chine feet help to dampen noise and vi­bra­tion, re­du­cing wear on the pump and as­so­ci­ated equip­ment. In­di­vidu­ally ad­justable, ma­chine feet en­able pre­cise lev­el­ling, mak­ing it easi­er to align the pump with ex­ist­ing pip­ing and re­du­cing the risk of er­rors dur­ing in­stall­a­tion. The feet also provide bet­ter ac­cess to the pump dur­ing routine main­ten­ance, where­as base plates may re­quire dis­as­sembly be­fore vi­tal com­pon­ents can be reached. Ma­chine feet there­fore im­prove pump avail­ab­il­ity by re­du­cing ser­vi­cing time.

Ad­di­tion­al be­ne­fits of ma­chine feet in­clude a bet­ter abil­ity to com­pensate for thermal ex­pan­sion, pre­vent­ing dam­age to the pump and pip­ing, as well as bet­ter sta­bil­ity dur­ing main­ten­ance at the pump’s flu­id end. Fur­ther­more, ma­chine feet gen­er­ally re­quire less room than a base plate, which is im­port­ant in con­fined spaces. Elim­in­at­ing the base plate also re­duces ma­ter­i­al and fab­ric­a­tion costs, mak­ing pump trans­port­a­tion and hand­ling easi­er. 

In­dus­tri­al com­pan­ies are cur­rently be­ing con­fron­ted with dy­nam­ic trans­form­a­tions. Pro­duc­tion pro­cesses are be­com­ing more mod­u­lar and flex­ible, mar­kets de­mand short­er re­sponse times, while re­quire­ments for ef­fi­ciency and sus­tain­ab­il­ity are in­creas­ing. At the same time, valu­able know­ledge is be­ing lost as many ex­per­i­enced pro­fes­sion­als re­tire. This makes com­pre­hens­ive and re­li­able risk as­sess­ment in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult, in par­tic­u­lar when it is still based on stat­ic pa­per re­ports or isol­ated files.

Tra­di­tion­al HAZOP tech­nique cap­tures haz­ards and their po­ten­tial im­pacts, but they are usu­ally stat­ic and tied to a spe­cif­ic point in time, of­ten es­tab­lished dur­ing con­struc­tion of the plant. This cre­ates dan­ger­ous gaps between doc­u­mented and ac­tu­al plant con­di­tions, es­pe­cially when pro­cesses are changed at short no­tice. In this con­text, ap­proaches that not only pre­serve past ana­lyses but also act­ively in­ter­act with live pro­cess data are gain­ing im­port­ance. The de­scribed meth­od is in its ap­plic­a­tion not lim­ited to mod­u­lar pro­cess plants – it also sup­ports reg­u­lar plants.

An ad­apt­ive ap­proach

The es­sence of in­ter­act­ive HAZOP (iaHAZOP) lies in mer­ging proven HAZOP prin­ciples with mod­ern di­git­al tech­no­lo­gies. Rather than re­ly­ing purely on manu­al as­sess­ments, the sys­tem in­teg­rates data streams from sensors, di­git­al plant mod­els, and pre­defined safety rules in­to a single frame­work. This trans­forms stat­ic risk as­sess­ment in­to a con­tinu­ous, ad­apt­ive pro­cess.

Un­like con­ven­tion­al spread­sheets or doc­u­ment col­lec­tions, iaHAZOP provides a plat­form that mir­rors the real-time status of a fa­cil­ity. It makes it pos­sible to both ac­cess stored safety in­form­a­tion quickly and identi­fy haz­ards in­stantly. The soft­ware is de­signed to sup­port, not re­place, hu­man ex­pert­ise: auto­mated eval­u­ations provide guid­ance, but crit­ic­al de­cisions re­main with qual­i­fied staff.

Core com­pon­ents

The func­tion­al­ity of iaHAZOP is built on sev­er­al tech­no­lo­gic­al and meth­od­o­lo­gic­al pil­lars, in­clud­ing:

• Di­git­al twins that sim­u­late the be­ha­viour of ma­chines and sys­tems vir­tu­ally to test scen­ari­os that would pose risks in real op­er­a­tions. These mod­els can be hos­ted loc­ally or in the cloud. 
• Know­ledge graphs com­bine avail­able in­form­a­tion such as HAZOP stud­ies, ex­pert know­ledge, and in­cid­ent re­cords in­to net­works, mak­ing hid­den in­ter­re­la­tions vis­ible.
• Real-time sensors con­tinu­ously provide data on para­met­ers such as pres­sure, tem­per­at­ure, and flow. De­vi­ations from safe ranges can be de­tec­ted im­me­di­ately.
• Haz­ard rules in­form op­er­at­ors on the fun­da­ment­al phys­ic­al and chem­ic­al prop­er­ties which need to be ob­served to pre­vent po­ten­tially haz­ard­ous situ­ations. 
• Reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments are in­teg­rated in­to the sys­tem so that eval­u­ations are al­ways checked against ap­plic­able stand­ards.
   

These ele­ments com­bined provide a dy­nam­ic and com­pre­hens­ive per­spect­ive on safe plant op­er­a­tion.

A con­crete im­pact

How can run-time risk as­sess­ment im­pact a pro­cess fa­cil­ity in the real world? The fol­low­ing ex­amples il­lus­trate in­cid­ents where iaHAZOP could have sup­por­ted in early an­ti­cip­a­tion or pre­ven­tion:

• Faulty valve lead­ing to ex­plo­sion: A valve ap­peared closed in the con­trol sys­tem but was leak­ing in­tern­ally due to wear and tear. Be­cause this in­form­a­tion was not shared between de­part­ments, the haz­ard went un­noticed, res­ult­ing in an ex­plo­sion due to un­wanted back­flow. iaHAZOP could have in­dic­ated the risk with the help of in­form­a­tion sourced from its vari­ous core com­pon­ents, such as sensor read­ings or di­git­al twin sim­u­la­tions.
• Re­sid­ual pres­sure in boil­er: Dur­ing main­ten­ance, it was as­sumed that a ves­sel was de­pres­sur­ised. Un­detec­ted re­sid­ual pres­sure caused steam to es­cape, in­jur­ing staff. Cross-check­ing live sensor data with di­git­al twins would have provided an early warn­ing.
• Out­dated risk as­sess­ment after pro­cess changes: Fol­low­ing op­er­a­tion­al modi­fic­a­tions, risk doc­u­ment­a­tion was not up­dated. This led to an acid leak, costly cleanup, and weeks of down­time. iaHAZOP would have ad­jus­ted the risk status in real time and high­lighted the in­con­sist­ency.
   

Be­ne­fits for mod­u­lar and large plants

The pro­cess in­dustry in­creas­ingly op­er­ates in two dir­ec­tions: flex­ible mod­u­lar plants and large, com­plex fa­cil­it­ies. In mod­u­lar plants, each change re­quires a com­plete re­as­sess­ment of risks. iaHAZOP ac­cel­er­ates and stand­ard­ises these eval­u­ations by ap­ply­ing safety rules auto­mat­ic­ally to the new con­fig­ur­a­tions. In large, stat­ic plants, the sys­tem con­nects data from oth­er­wise isol­ated de­part­ments. This cre­ates a uni­fied view of the ac­tu­al safety status, mak­ing de­pend­en­cies more trans­par­ent and en­abling faster in­ter­ven­tion in emer­gen­cies. But safety is not the only be­ne­fit — by map­ping haz­ards and their trig­ger­ing events (fail­ure modes) se­mantic­ally, de­part­ments bey­ond just safety gain ad­vant­ages. Ad­ded value is also gen­er­ated for op­er­a­tions and main­ten­ance teams.

Com­pli­ance and doc­u­ment­a­tion

Bey­ond haz­ard pre­ven­tion, iaHAZOP sup­ports com­pan­ies in meet­ing leg­al and or­gan­isa­tion­al re­quire­ments. Doc­u­ment­a­tion, which is of­ten time-in­tens­ive, can be par­tially auto­mated. Risk re­ports can be gen­er­ated dir­ectly from the sys­tem, im­prov­ing trans­par­ency and trace­ab­il­ity. This re­duces ad­min­is­trat­ive bur­dens and in­creases leg­al cer­tainty.

Flex­ible im­ple­ment­a­tion and out­look

Not all com­pan­ies have the same di­git­al ma­tur­ity. iaHAZOP is there­fore de­signed for phased im­ple­ment­a­tion. For op­er­at­ors with more ad­vanced in­fra­struc­tures, it can be in­cor­por­ated in­to the sys­tem more promptly, where­as oth­ers might need to start small and build up to a mod­ern risk man­age­ment sys­tem pro­gress­ively.

The long-term vis­ion is to em­bed safety as an in­teg­ral part of daily op­er­a­tions rather than treat­ing it as a peri­od­ic ob­lig­a­tion. By in­cor­por­at­ing in­tel­li­gent ana­lyt­ics in­to routine work­flows, com­pan­ies foster a cul­ture of foresight that min­im­ises both ac­ci­dents and down­time.

Con­clu­sion

The de­mands on risk man­age­ment in the pro­cess in­dustry con­tin­ue to grow. Tra­di­tion­al meth­ods based on peri­od­ic re­views are no longer suf­fi­cient. iaHAZOP bridges the gap by com­bin­ing the strengths of es­tab­lished HAZOP stud­ies with di­git­al cap­ab­il­it­ies. It provides a real-time view of plant con­di­tions, con­nects know­ledge and data, and em­powers ex­perts to make well-foun­ded de­cisions. In do­ing so, it shows how safety, pro­ductiv­ity, and reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance can be aligned. Com­pan­ies ad­opt­ing such dy­nam­ic solu­tions po­s­i­tion them­selves to thrive in an in­creas­ingly com­plex en­vir­on­ment.
 

Condition monitoring specialist SENSONICS are experts in developing highly effective monitoring systems based on over 50 years of experience, including vibration monitoring products. A good example of this is the recent completion of a cooling tower monitoring project at a major Petrochemicals plant.

The Project Engineer at the site confirmed they were looking for a suitable system to monitor and protect cooling tower fans to prevent issues in case of failure of the fan blades. The requirement would be for individual systems to monitor each of the twenty motor / gearbox driven fans which were located between the motors and fans around the base of the cooling tower.

Early warning to avoid major damage

Confirming the specific requirements of the application, the Project Engineer commented, “The fan speed is 131RPM / 2.18Hz and what we want is to have a single transducer mounted on the gearbox (each fan is mounted on the gearbox output shaft) and the issue we want to address is the potential failure of the fan blades. When this has happened, the vibration has been so severe it damaged the concrete platform that the fan assembly is mounted on, as well as damaging adjacent fans from the fan projectiles”. Also, it was confirmed that, “The atmosphere where the fan is mounted is very wet and windy as the fans pull moist air out of the cooling tower packing and blows it across the gearbox and motor.”

Confirmation of these specific issues and challenges initially suggested the need to install a suitably ranged 4-20mA vibration transducer and then feed this to a closely located unit that has the start / stop buttons for the fans, enabling the tripping of a fan if the vibration is too high.

There was also a need to feed the overall vibration levels to the main plant DCS system. Due to the specific requirements of this application the frequency of response of the transducers would need to be lower than below 2Hz and there was no requirement for any local display or further diagnostics. A simple system which would reliably trip the fan out if it were failing and additionally to give an indication on DCS for the overall vibration level.

Conclusion

Once the specific requirements of this vibration monitoring application were confirmed, Sensonics were able to suggest and supply a combination of their DN26 G3 dual channel protection system along with their VEL/GLF low frequency (slow speed) velocity transducers. Established in the condition monitoring market for many years Sensonics has supplied thousands of these compact and innovative, din rail mountable DN26 G3 dual channel vibration monitors which have delivered reliable and cost-effective vibration monitoring across a wide range of installations. This high performance fully programmable signal conditioning unit is capable of monitoring 2 channels of absolute vibration, shaft vibration or shaft position, while a third channel option is available for measuring speed or for use a phase reference.

To complete the solution for this application is Sensonics VEL/GLF, a low frequency velocity transducer (slow speed) option proved to be ideally suited to the large fans which were operating at a minimum RPM. This electro dynamic sensor provides a superior performance compared to piezo-electric devices by combining high measurement sensitivity with a frequency response down to 0.5 Hz.

This level of sensitivity, along with excellent noise performance, provides the necessary dynamic range required for detailed analysis of gearbox vibration, so is ideal for measuring velocity vibration on equipment with speeds down to 30 RPM. Furthermore, the VEL/GLF has advantages over traditional piezoelectric based velocity vibration sensors which are susceptible to many forms of interference in low frequency applications that can result in spurious readings and alarms.

As a result of its robust design, the VEL/GLF offers high noise immunity due to the low impedance electro dynamic nature of the sensor assembly.

In addition to the filtering of high frequency events and since no electronic integration is required, means the design of the sensor is immune to the saturation problems that impair the reliability of other piezoelectric devices.
 

Flir in­tro­duces the iXX-Series of next-gen­er­a­tion app-en­abled thermal cam­er­as that are set to trans­form in­spec­tion tasks across a mul­ti­tude of as­set con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing, build­ing in­spec­tion, and oth­er ap­plic­a­tions. Built on Flir’s new ACE plat­form, the iXX com­bines the power of apps with a high-per­form­ance ther­mo­graphy in­spec­tion tool, en­abling scal­able, in­tu­it­ive, and con­nec­ted con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing. Not­ably, dir­ect in­teg­ra­tion with Flir As­set­link browser-based soft­ware auto­mat­ic­ally con­nects Flir ra­diomet­ric im­ages to an as­set hier­archy struc­ture, speed­ing work­flows and de­liv­er­ing crit­ic­al in­sight.

Tra­di­tion­al thermal in­spec­tions are of­ten com­plex, in­con­sist­ent, and dis­con­nec­ted. Scal­ing tra­di­tion­al ther­mo­graphy pro­grams can be dif­fi­cult, yet fail­ing to do so res­ults in safety and pro­ductiv­ity re­lated costs. The new Flir iXX solves these chal­lenges with a high-qual­ity, app-driv­en plat­form that sim­pli­fies in­spec­tions, stand­ard­izes data, and scales ef­fort­lessly across teams and sites.

Plug­ging the Skills Gap

Around 60% of main­ten­ance teams re­port a short­age of skilled ther­mo­graph­ers. To help over­come this is­sue, in­tu­it­ive, app-guided work­flows on the new Flir iXX-Series en­able main­ten­ance work­ers of any skill level to un­der­take ef­fi­cient and se­cure in­spec­tions.

The FLIR iXX comes with everything needed to get star­ted, even provid­ing an on­board­ing app to en­sure suc­cess­ful ad­op­tion. The res­ult is a shal­low­er learn­ing curve for less ex­per­i­enced users look­ing to per­form ex­pert-level in­spec­tions and ac­cur­ately as­sess as­set con­di­tion.

Bet­ter As­set Health In­sight

Re­port­ing de­mands up to 50% of a tech­ni­cian’s time us­ing tra­di­tion­al work­flows. However, this per­cent­age drops to zero with con­nec­ted work­flows, al­low­ing users to fo­cus on in­spec­tions, not pa­per­work.

The iXX comes loaded with Flir's new As­set­link browser-based soft­ware, which al­lows users to plan in­spec­tions, con­nect thermal im­ages to as­set data, and pro­duce in­spec­tion re­ports with the goal of sim­pli­fy­ing work­flows, im­prov­ing as­set health, and re­du­cing re­port­ing time. Fur­ther­more, trend visu­al­iz­a­tion provides in­sight on as­set con­di­tion not pos­sible with a single snap­shot, while dash­board data visu­al­iz­a­tion sim­pli­fies com­mu­nic­a­tion and im­proves op­er­at­or un­der­stand­ing of con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing pro­grams.

The cli­mate crisis is for­cing na­tions to ur­gently find ways to lower their green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions, and car­bon cap­ture is likely to be one of the key tech­no­lo­gies in en­abling this goal. This, in turn, is prompt­ing a de­mand for GHG ana­lys­ers to help as­sess cap­ture tech­no­lo­gies and to veri­fy that GHG re­duc­tion claims are val­id.

Meas­ure­ment is ba­sic re­quire­ment

Car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS) in­volves the cap­ture of CO₂ emis­sions from in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses, such as steel and ce­ment pro­duc­tion, or from the com­bus­tion of fossil fuels to gen­er­ate power. Primar­ily, this CO₂ is then stored un­der­ground in geo­lo­gic­al form­a­tions. Al­tern­at­ively, it could be util­ised in in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses by con­vert­ing it in­to plastics, con­crete or bio­fuel, for ex­ample. This is known as Car­bon Cap­ture Util­isa­tion and Stor­age (CCUS). However, with all of these op­tions, as the say­ing goes: ‘you can’t man­age what you don’t mon­it­or’ so the meas­ure­ment of GHGs such as car­bon di­ox­ide, meth­ane and ni­trous ox­ide will be es­sen­tial.

It is im­port­ant to ac­know­ledge that car­bon cap­ture may not be the sil­ver bul­let that solves the cli­mate crisis. Firstly, it has yet to be im­ple­men­ted on a large scale, secondly, even if it is suc­cess­ful, it will only par­tially lower GHG emis­sions, and thirdly many en­vir­on­ment­al groups are un­happy with re­li­ance on car­bon cap­ture be­cause it risks ex­tend­ing the use of fossil fuels. Nev­er­the­less, giv­en the cli­mate emer­gency, enorm­ous in­vest­ments in car­bon cap­ture are either un­der­way or planned.

Ac­cord­ing to the Glob­al CCS In­sti­tute, in its Glob­al Status Re­port 2024, over the pre­vi­ous 12 months, the num­ber of CCS fa­cil­it­ies in op­er­a­tion glob­ally had ris­en to 50, while the total num­ber of fa­cil­it­ies in the de­vel­op­ment pipeline has surged 60% to 628. At the same time, the car­bon cap­ture ca­pa­city of fa­cil­it­ies un­der con­struc­tion in­creased by 57%.

The UK is one of the coun­tries lead­ing the growth in car­bon cap­ture ca­pa­city. In Oc­to­ber, for ex­ample, the UK gov­ern­ment an­nounced £21.7 bil­lion of fund­ing for car­bon cap­ture projects over 25 years.  The an­nounce­ment is in line with the UK’s am­bi­tion to store 20 to 30 mil­lion tons of CO₂ per year by 2030 by us­ing CCS tech­no­logy.

Many oth­er coun­tries are also le­gis­lat­ing for and in­vest­ing in de­car­bon­isa­tion strategies in­clud­ing car­bon cap­ture. The EU for ex­ample has set a tar­get of 50 Mtpa CO₂ in­jec­tion ca­pa­city by 2030, in­tro­duced by the Net-Zero In­dustry Act, which came in­to force in June 2024. In the USA the DOE has awar­ded or is ne­go­ti­at­ing awards for over US$2.2 bil­lion from the 2021 Bi­par­tis­an In­fra­struc­ture Law (BIL) to ad­vance car­bon man­age­ment projects. 231 Class VI CO₂ in­jec­tion well per­mit ap­plic­a­tions are be­ing eval­u­ated for 88 projects across 18 US states and one tri­bal na­tion un­der the US EPA’s Un­der­ground In­jec­tion Con­trol (UIC) pro­gram.

At Sig­nal Group’s main in­volve­ment with car­bon cap­ture has been with com­bus­tion pro­cesses in­volving fossil fuels or waste de­rived from fossil fuels. To-date these projects have largely been in the pi­lot stage, as re­search­ers and pro­cess op­er­at­ors seek to re­fine and prove the tech­no­logy be­fore in­vest­ing in a full-scale fa­cil­ity. For ex­ample, Sig­nal ana­lys­ers are be­ing util­ised at a pi­lot car­bon cap­ture unit at a nat­ur­al gas com­bus­tion plant in south­ern Arkan­sas, USA. The com­pany Aqua­lung Car­bon Cap­ture is tri­al­ling its nov­el car­bon cap­ture tech­no­logy on a gen­er­ic gas-fired boil­er, and ap­proached Sig­nal for help with its re­quire­ment to con­tinu­ously check for non-com­bus­ted hy­dro­car­bons in the boil­er’s emis­sions.

Ex­plain­ing the ad­vant­ages of Aqua­lung’s mem­brane tech­no­logy, Jonath­an Garb­ett says: “Tra­di­tion­al car­bon cap­ture tech­niques such as ab­sorp­tion with amines are re­l­at­ively ex­pens­ive, with a re­quire­ment for amine, heat and a steady stream, so they are only used com­mer­cially in lar­ger ap­plic­a­tions. In con­trast, our pat­en­ted mem­brane tech­no­logy re­quires less power and works well on smal­ler, de-cent­ral­ised plants.”

Sig­nal’s gas ana­lys­is sys­tem in­cluded an S4 SOL­AR heated FID VOC ana­lys­er with a heated line and mod­el 346 front-end fil­ter. In most coun­tries, FID (flame ion­isa­tion de­tec­tion) is the stand­ard ref­er­ence meth­od for the meas­ure­ment of total hy­dro­car­bons, and the sampling hand­ling sys­tem is de­signed to en­sure that the sample be­ing de­livered to the ana­lys­er is truly rep­res­ent­at­ive of the emis­sions, with no pos­sib­il­ity of con­dens­a­tion in the sample line, or the ana­lys­er.

Choos­ing a GHG ana­lys­er

In the ex­ample above a Sig­nal ana­lys­er is be­ing used to de­tect in­com­plete com­bus­tion; not just for safety reas­ons, but also be­cause fossil fuels are in­ev­it­ably an im­port­ant part of the trans­ition to a de­car­bon­ised eco­nomy, so it is vi­tal that where they are used, they are util­ised as ef­fi­ciently as pos­sible.

In or­der to be able to check and veri­fy car­bon cap­ture it is ne­ces­sary to meas­ure GHGs both be­fore and after the cap­ture pro­cess. Con­sequently, it is prefer­able to de­ploy ana­lys­ers that are able to take samples from two dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions con­cur­rently, and fre­quently it will also be ne­ces­sary to be able to con­tinu­ously meas­ure more than one GHG. 

S4 PULSAR gas ana­lys­ers em­ploy Gas Fil­ter Cor­rel­a­tion tech­no­logy to meas­ure only the gas, or gases, of in­terest, with neg­li­gible in­ter­fer­ence from oth­er gases. The op­tic­al bench is en­closed in a heated cham­ber which means that an ex­tern­al chiller is not ne­ces­sary for non-con­dens­ing samples. By us­ing two sample cells of dif­fer­ent lengths, in series, it is pos­sible to se­lect a low-range and a high-range. This is im­port­ant for ap­plic­a­tions such as car­bon cap­ture where high levels ex­ist be­fore cap­ture, and very low levels after.  A par­al­lel twin op­tic­al bench ver­sion is also avail­able for ap­plic­a­tions re­quir­ing the meas­ure­ment of two dif­fer­ent gases or two ranges of the same gas run­ning con­tinu­ously.

In ad­di­tion to their re­mote con­nectiv­ity soft­ware (S4i), Sig­nal’s S4 ana­lys­ers also fea­ture a rugged, de­tach­able tab­let which serves as a con­trol screen, and con­nects wire­lessly to the ana­lys­er via an in­built 802.11 wifi that can con­nect up to 50 metres away. This provides users with the en­hanced abil­ity to view live data from a dif­fer­ent (safer or more con­veni­ent) loc­a­tion, and even man­age data log­ging, alarms and cal­ib­ra­tion.

At the mo­ment, many car­bon cap­ture projects are still at the pi­lot stage, and GHG ana­lys­is is per­form­ing a vi­tal role with­in them, help­ing to eval­u­ate and veri­fy car­bon cap­ture tech­niques. As full-scale projects are im­ple­men­ted, gas ana­lys­is will play an even more im­port­ant role, demon­strat­ing not just that car­bon has been cap­tured, but also how much. This func­tion will be crit­ic­ally im­port­ant in car­bon mar­kets. In ad­di­tion, where cap­tured CO₂ is sold or trans­ferred for util­isa­tion, the ac­cur­ate meas­ure­ment of CO₂ con­cen­tra­tion will be re­quired.

COP29 moved to­wards the es­tab­lish­ment of a glob­al car­bon mar­ket

A sig­ni­fic­ant out­come from COP29 in Baku was agree­ment on the re­main­ing sec­tions of Art­icle 6 of the Par­is Agree­ment, to en­able the de­vel­op­ment of a glob­al car­bon mar­ket. Art­icle 6 de­tails how par­ti­cipants can pur­sue vol­un­tary co­oper­a­tion to reach their cli­mate tar­gets – with the Par­is Agree­ment Cred­it­ing Mech­an­ism identi­fy­ing and en­cour­aging op­por­tun­it­ies for veri­fi­able emis­sion re­duc­tions.

Fol­low­ing pro­trac­ted ne­go­ti­ations in Baku, de­veloped na­tions also agreed to help chan­nel at least $300bn a year in­to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries by 2035 to sup­port their ef­forts to deal with cli­mate change. This fin­ance will be used for ad­apt­a­tion, mit­ig­a­tion, re­new­able en­ergy, ag­ri­cul­ture, loss and dam­age, and debt re­struc­tur­ing. Of these meas­ures, mit­ig­a­tion (re­du­cing emis­sions and en­han­cing sinks) will help drive the growth in car­bon cap­ture.

Sig­nal Group very much wel­comes ini­ti­at­ives to ac­cel­er­ate GHG emis­sions re­duc­tions. Some car­bon cred­it projects do not in­volve the dir­ect meas­ure­ment of GHG gases – wind farms and forest con­ser­va­tion for ex­ample. However, it is im­port­ant to note the word ‘veri­fi­able’ in car­bon trad­ing texts, and this is where our GHG ana­lys­ers will play a crit­ic­ally im­port­ant role, be­cause, where GHGs are emit­ted, it is only pos­sible to claim GHG emis­sions re­duc­tions (by car­bon cap­ture for ex­ample) if they are meas­ured, and one of the most im­port­ant ways to do this is with an ac­cur­ate, re­li­able gas ana­lys­er. Fur­ther meas­ure­ments will be ne­ces­sary if the cap­tured car­bon is stored or util­ised (CCS or CCUS).
 
Sig­nal’s S4 PULSAR ana­lys­er em­ploys NDIR tech­no­logy to meas­ure a range of crit­ic­ally im­port­ant gases in­clud­ing GHGs such as car­bon di­ox­ide, ni­trous ox­ide and meth­ane. The S4 PULSAR is an ex­tract­ive gas ana­lys­er, cap­able of draw­ing samples from both be­fore and after car­bon cap­ture, so that ef­fect­ive GHG emis­sions re­duc­tion can be demon­strated.
 
To gen­er­ate car­bon cred­its, a project’s emis­sion re­duc­tions need to be meas­ured and quan­ti­fied. This in­volves cal­cu­lat­ing how much CO₂ (or equi­val­ent GHGs) has been avoided or re­moved com­pared to the baseline. The cal­cu­la­tion de­pends on the spe­cif­ics of the project and in­volves stand­ard meth­od­o­lo­gies set by cer­ti­fy­ing bod­ies. It is im­port­ant to note that al­though the term ‘car­bon cred­its’ is ap­plic­able, it is ac­tu­ally a term that ap­plies to all GHGs – hence the men­tion of ‘or equi­val­ent GHGs’.
 
With the abil­ity to meas­ure a range of GHGs, the S4 PULSAR uses ref­er­ence meth­od gas ana­lys­is for im­port­ant gases such as meth­ane and ni­trous ox­ide. Why are they im­port­ant? Well, meth­ane is about 25 times more power­ful as a GHG than car­bon di­ox­ide, and ni­trous ox­ide is 300 times more power­ful!

Sum­mary

The suc­cess­ful achieve­ment of glob­al net zero tar­gets will de­pend on an enorm­ous ar­ray of factors. However, ac­cur­ate, re­li­able, veri­fi­able data will be es­sen­tial if the data pro­duced by or­gan­isa­tions and coun­tries are to be trus­ted.
 

Ser­vomex has up­graded its SER­VOTOUGH Spec­traEx­act 2500F flex­ible gas and li­quid wa­ter ana­lys­er for haz­ard­ous areas. The in­nov­at­ive ana­lys­er is IEC Ex ap­proved and meets com­pli­ance re­quire­ments across Europe, the USA and Canada. It provides highly ac­cur­ate data while re­du­cing main­ten­ance needs and costs. Its di­git­al com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tems en­sure seam­less in­teg­ra­tion. The Spec­traEx­act 2500F is de­signed to of­fer a flex­ible ana­lyt­ic­al solu­tion ad­apt­able to a range of ap­plic­a­tions and haz­ard­ous areas. The rugged build al­lows ana­lys­is of tox­ic, flam­mable or cor­ros­ive samples without dam­age to equip­ment or the en­vir­on­ment. Wall-mount­ing op­tions en­able flex­ible place­ment, even in the harshest of con­di­tions.

En­hanced ser­vice in­ter­vals and simple main­ten­ance

The ana­lys­er en­hances pro­cess con­trol by de­liv­er­ing high-pre­ci­sion meas­ure­ments, from ppm levels to per­cent­ages. This en­ables op­tim­iz­a­tion of pro­cesses im­prov­ing op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency and the safety of people and en­vir­on­ments. Users can ex­pect in­creased up­time and re­duced on­go­ing costs thanks to non-de­plet­ing, NDIR sens­ing tech­no­lo­gies that ex­tend cal­ib­ra­tion in­ter­vals. Ser­vi­cing is simple, with a re­mov­able sample cell that is sep­ar­ate from the elec­tron­ics, mak­ing sched­uled main­ten­ance quick and easy.

As the latest edi­tion to Ser­vomex’s Spec­traEx­act range, the 2500F of­fers a dir­ect up­grade for ex­ist­ing 2500 users. Di­git­al com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tems en­sure smooth in­teg­ra­tion with ex­ist­ing setups, while en­hanced us­ab­il­ity provides rap­id re­sponse times and sim­pli­fies data ac­cess. Real-time data can be mon­itored re­motely, fur­ther im­prov­ing safety and ef­fi­ciency.
 

Emer­son an­nounced the re­lease of the Rose­mount™ 3144S Tem­per­at­ure Trans­mit­ter, a new in­dus­tri­al meas­ure­ment solu­tion with the flex­ib­il­ity to meet the most de­mand­ing tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment chal­lenges, al­low­ing for in­creased ef­fi­ciency and safety. The trans­mit­ter ad­dresses these is­sues with 0.05 de­grees Celsi­us (0.09 Fahren­heit) of ac­cur­acy needed for pro­cesses that re­quire the highest meas­ure­ment per­form­ance. It is avail­able with an op­tion­al 20-year sta­bil­ity spe­cific­a­tion and a 20-year lim­ited war­ranty, as­sur­ing that it is one of the most re­li­able solu­tions on the mar­ket.

Emer­son’s new Ready­Con­nect™ Tech­no­logy al­lows ease-of-use by en­abling plug-and-play sensor con­fig­ur­a­tion with a push of a but­ton, elim­in­at­ing the need to manu­ally in­put sensor in­form­a­tion and Cal­l­en­dar-Van Dusen coef­fi­cients, sav­ing con­fig­ur­a­tion and com­mis­sion­ing time. The Rose­mount 3144S Tem­per­at­ure Trans­mit­ter fits well in a wide vari­ety of ap­plic­a­tions across a broad range of in­dus­tries, mak­ing it a ver­sat­ile choice for many dif­fer­ent types of tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment needs.

Task-based menu and quick ser­vice but­tons

An op­er­at­or in­ter­face with a sim­pli­fied, task-based menu and com­mon nav­ig­a­tion struc­ture across host and con­fig­ur­a­tion tools also al­lows fur­ther ease-of-use. To fur­ther in­crease pro­ductiv­ity, Quick Ser­vice But­tons provide loc­al ac­cess to ba­sic com­mis­sion­ing and main­ten­ance tasks, such as view­ing the cur­rent con­fig­ur­a­tion, per­form­ing a loop test and ro­tat­ing the dis­play. Bluetooth® wire­less tech­no­logy provides re­mote ac­cess to the device at dis­tances up to 50 feet for in­creased pro­ductiv­ity, re­li­ab­il­ity and safety.

With the Loop In­teg­rity dia­gnost­ic and RTD Meas­ure­ment Pro­tec­tion, the trans­mit­ter provides full dia­gnost­ic cov­er­age from the tem­per­at­ure sensor to the con­trol room, in­clud­ing sensor health dia­gnostics, dual in­put cap­ab­il­it­ies and con­tinu­ous elec­tric­al loop mon­it­or­ing, en­abling real-time in­sight in­to each meas­ure­ment point.
 

Up­grad­ing pneu­mat­ic con­trol valves to di­git­al com­mu­nic­a­tion and con­trol can op­tim­ise pre­ci­sion and re­peat­ab­il­ity, as well as open­ing ac­cess to real-time pro­cess data. While re­design­ing to a full di­git­al con­trol sys­tem could be ad­vant­age­ous, the ini­tial time and cost re­quire­ments might be pro­hib­it­ive. As an al­tern­at­ive, in­teg­rat­ing di­git­al po­si­tion­ers and pro­cess con­trol­lers for pneu­mat­ic con­trol valves can ful­fil many of the ad­vant­ages without com­mit­ting to a com­plete di­git­al trans­ition. This ap­proach is ideal to mod­ern­ise ex­ist­ing sys­tems as well as im­prove new designs in­volving pneu­mat­ic con­trol valves.

To of­fer a seam­less trans­ition, Bürkert has in­tro­duced the Side­CON­TROL series of elec­tropneu­mat­ic po­si­tion­ers and con­trol­lers. The range achieves uni­ver­sal mount­ing to vir­tu­ally any ex­ist­ing pneu­mat­ic con­trol valve ac­tu­at­or, in­clud­ing partturn and lin­ear ac­tu­at­ors that com­ply with NAMUR stand­ards. An in­ter­face for non­stand­ard ac­tu­at­ors is also avail­able, in­clud­ing a spe­cial ad­apter kit for Type 3277 Sam­son ac­tu­at­ors, en­abling a di­git­al up­grade for valve strokes from 7.5 mm to 30 mm.

IO-Link and Eth­er­net

The simplest ap­proach to di­git­al ret­ro­fit is via IO-Link con­nectiv­ity, a stand­ard­ised pro­tocol for con­nect­ing sensors and ac­tu­at­ors with auto­ma­tion sys­tems. Un­like ana­logue com­mu­nic­a­tions, IO-Link en­ables bi­d­irec­tion­al data ex­change. The ad­vant­ages of two-way, high-speed com­mu­nic­a­tions in­clude rap­id feed­back for pre­cise valve po­s­i­tion­ing, as well as de­tailed dia­gnostics and para­met­erisa­tion of devices.

IO-Link con­nectiv­ity through a po­si­tion­er like Bürkert’s Type 8791 Di­git­al elec­tropneu­mat­ic po­si­tion­er Side­CON­TROL is fast and simple to in­teg­rate. It re­lies on stand­ard cabling, provides plug-and-play con­nec­tion with IO-Link mas­ter mod­ules, and point-to-point con­nectiv­ity between the po­si­tion­er and con­trol­ler re­moves the need for ad­di­tion­al switches.
Op­tim­ising the di­git­al trans­ition fur­ther still, real-time Eth­er­net-based con­nectiv­ity is also avail­able for pneu­mat­ic con­trol valve ret­ro­fits. Bürkert’s Type 8792 po­si­tion­er, as well as the Type 8793 Di­git­al elec­tropneu­mat­ic Pro­cess Con­trol­ler, add con­nectiv­ity via pro­to­cols in­clud­ing Eth­er­Net/IP, PROFINET, Mod­bus TCP, PROFIB­US DP-V1 or the CAN-based Bürkert sys­tem bus (büS). These ad­vant­ages typ­ic­ally re­quire an Eth­er­net gate­way in co­ordin­a­tion with a PLC.

In­dustry 4.0 ad­vant­ages

Wheth­er IO-Link or an Eth­er­net pro­tocol is in­teg­rated, di­git­isa­tion not only im­proves valve con­trol pre­ci­sion, but it also en­hances mon­it­or­ing to de­liv­er the be­ne­fits of In­dustry 4.0. This level of data ana­lys­is can im­prove pro­cess qual­ity, as well as op­tim­ising pro­cess ef­fi­ciency. A new level of dia­gnostics can also be achieved, aided by built-in func­tions with­in the po­si­tion­ers and con­trol­lers, en­abling pro­act­ive main­ten­ance that can re­duce un­planned down­time and in­crease pro­ductiv­ity.

The Side­CON­TROL products can be ret­ro­fit­ted with no in­ter­ven­tion or down­time re­quired to the flu­id­ic pro­cess. Mean­while, the X.Tune com­mis­sion­ing tool of­fers auto­mated valve tun­ing by op­tim­ising the valve's re­sponse time, sta­bil­ity, and ac­cur­acy by auto­mat­ic­ally ad­just­ing the con­trol para­met­ers for the spe­cif­ic ac­tu­at­or and pro­cess con­di­tions. It’s also pos­sible to switch from single- to double-act­ing ac­tu­at­ors at any time.

Bürkert’s Side­CON­TROL series provides a cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion for up­grad­ing pneu­mat­ic con­trol valves with di­git­al cap­ab­il­it­ies. By in­teg­rat­ing IO-Link or Eth­er­net-based con­nectiv­ity, man­u­fac­tur­ers can em­brace many of the ad­vant­ages of di­git­al con­trol, in­clud­ing pre­ci­sion, ef­fi­ciency, and real-time mon­it­or­ing, without the cost and com­plex­ity of a full sys­tem over­haul.
 

With the new type 4083, Schubert & Salzer is ex­tend­ing its product range by a three-way ball sec­tor valve with elec­tric ac­tu­at­or for op­er­a­tion in di­vert­ing or mix­ing func­tions. The quarter turn valve with a sup­ply voltage of 24–240 V DC/AC (50/60 Hz) en­ables high-pre­ci­sion con­trol (range­ab­il­ity of 100:1) over a wide con­trol range with Kvs val­ues that are around 20% high­er than those of com­mon al­tern­at­ives. Due to the spe­cial con­tour of the ball sec­tor, the total Kv value (volu­met­ric flow) re­mains vir­tu­ally con­stant in any valve po­s­i­tion.

Due to their unique prop­er­ties, elec­tric­ally or pneu­mat­ic­ally ac­tu­ated three-way ball sec­tor valves of­fer par­tic­u­larly high ad­ded value in the tem­per­at­ure con­trol and mix­ing pro­cesses of the steel, chem­ic­al, food and bever­age in­dus­tries as well as in power gen­er­a­tion, the man­u­fac­ture of plastic and rub­ber products and for use in test benches.
 

Hutchin­son is tak­ing a new step for­ward by im­ple­ment­ing PFAS-free LUB­RITAPE-E coat­ing for multi-way valve seal­ing pads. This solu­tion meets mar­ket re­quire­ments and en­vir­on­ment­al stand­ards while en­sur­ing per­form­ance and re­li­ab­il­ity.

A sus­tain­able al­tern­at­ive to PT­FE film

To an­swer new en­vir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions and the need to re­duce the chem­ic­al foot­print of ma­ter­i­als, Pre­ci­sion Seal­ing Sys­tems (PSS) from Hutchin­son Group is in­nov­at­ing with LUB­RITAPE-E, a trans­par­ent film ap­plied to rub­ber parts, while ideal for low fric­tion seal­ing pads for multi-way rotary valves. De­signed as a dir­ect re­place­ment for PT­FE solu­tion, this coat­ing de­liv­ers the same high-per­form­ance prop­er­ties.

The seal­ing pads of­fer a low-fric­tion coef­fi­cient (Dy­nam­ic CoF Dry: 0.1 | Wet: 0.05), high res­ist­ance to ab­ra­sion and a wa­ter-re­pel­lent sur­face. They are com­pat­ible with EP­DM and have a tem­per­at­ure res­ist­ance from -50°C to +115°C. The seal­ing solu­tions are par­tic­u­larly suit­able for thermal man­age­ment mod­ules and multi-way valves. They en­sure leak-free op­er­a­tion while al­low­ing smooth move­ment of in­tern­al parts, Seal­ing pads for mul­ti­way valve even un­der high tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure con­di­tions.
 

NET­Z­SCH is ex­pand­ing its rotary lobe pump product port­fo­lio with the new TOR­NADO® T1 XXLB-F size. The pump has been spe­cially de­veloped for de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions and en­ables ef­fi­cient con­vey­ing in nu­mer­ous areas of ap­plic­a­tion with high flow rates. With the new TOR­NADO® T1 XXLB-F, NET­Z­SCH is set­ting new stand­ards in the pump­ing of highly vis­cous, solids-laden or thick flu­ids. Sens­it­ive li­quids are con­veyed gently by the pump. Chal­len­ging ap­plic­a­tions such as MBR fil­tra­tion, sewage lift­ing sys­tems, well­point dewa­ter­ing or the pump­ing of highly vis­cous me­dia such as molasses or magma in the sug­ar in­dustry are no prob­lem for the rotary lobe pump. 

The XXLB-F en­ables pump­ing at high­er pres­sures and lar­ger flow rates, even with vary­ing op­er­at­ing pres­sures. Easy clean­ing and main­ten­ance of the pump res­ult in less wear, less down­time and there­fore cost sav­ings. The new size is the op­tim­um choice for ap­plic­a­tions with the highest de­mands on the pump used.

NORD has in­creased the max­im­um torques of its UNI­CASE worm gear units. The NORD de­vel­op­ment team thus achieved in­creased per­form­ance of 10 to 15 per­cent – without chan­ging the gear units’ out­er (con­nec­tion) di­men­sions, or their gen­er­al out­er ap­pear­ance. The re­li­able and eco­nom­ic drive solu­tion of­fers high­er per­form­ance without the need of ad­just­ing ex­ist­ing cus­tom­er con­fig­ur­a­tions. As the hous­ing sizes re­main un­changed, the worm gear units will still be avail­able as a drop-in solu­tion for main­ten­ance works or re­pairs. To save costs and in­stall­a­tion space, smal­ler sizes can be se­lec­ted ac­cord­ing to the ap­plic­a­tion, res­ult­ing in more con­struct­ive free­dom in ma­chine and sys­tem design.

High-skilled en­gin­eer­ing

The (con­nec­tion) di­men­sions have not changed, but in or­der to im­ple­ment high­er power ranges, NORD in­cor­por­ated new worm shafts with lar­ger bear­ing seats, as well as an ad­di­tion­al re­in­force­ment of the worm wheel it­self. The cur­rent UNI­CASE worm gear unit series of­fers a power range from 0.12 kW to 15 kW, and torques between 90 Nm and 3,000 Nm. Oth­er product ad­vant­ages in­clude smooth and quiet run­ning, high over­load ca­pa­city and ro­bust design. High axi­al and ra­di­al loads en­sure high (op­er­a­tion­al) re­li­ab­il­ity and long ser­vice life.

The UNI­CASE worm gear units in cast iron hous­ings from NORD are avail­able in ap­plic­a­tion-spe­cif­ic ver­sions: as hol­low and sol­id shaft gear units, and for shaft, flange or foot mount­ing. The com­pany’s elec­tric mo­tors can be ad­ded as an in­teg­rated solu­tion. Mo­tor mount­ing via an IEC/NEMA ad­apter is also pos­sible.

The VP­Flow­Scope M Thermal In-line ifrom VPIn­stru­ments s a multi-func­tion­al device of­fer­ing bi-dir­ec­tion­al flow meas­ure­ment, pres­sure meas­ure­ment, tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment and total flow mon­it­or­ing. De­signed for point-of-use con­sump­tion meas­ure­ments, this state-of-the-art thermal mass flow sensor guar­an­tees ef­fi­ciency, re­li­ab­il­ity and un­par­alleled ease of main­ten­ance.It is avail­able with 4-20 mA/Mod­bus RTU or PoE (Mod­bus TCP) con­nectiv­ity. Quick Con­nect tech­no­logy en­ables easy in­stall­a­tion and safe, pre­cise align­ment. The pat­en­ted VP­Sensor­Cart­ridge® en­ables quick on-site ser­vi­cing. Ideal for smal­ler dia­met­ers (1" to 2"), the Flow­Scope is per­fect for point-of-use and sub­meter­ing ap­plic­a­tions.

Re­cyc­able sensor cart­ridge

Thanks to its VP­Sensor­Cart­ridge® tech­no­logy, the VP­Flow­Scope M Thermal In-line elim­in­ates the need for tra­di­tion­al re­cal­ib­ra­tion. Users can simply ex­change the sensor cart­ridge on-site in­stead, sig­ni­fic­antly re­du­cing down­time and main­ten­ance costs. This in­nov­a­tion en­sures con­tinu­ous, pre­cise meas­ure­ments with min­im­al op­er­a­tion­al dis­rup­tion. Used VP­Sensor­Cart­ridges can be re­turned for re­fur­bish­ment, re­du­cing waste and con­serving re­sources. Users will re­ceive a re­fund for each re­turned cart­ridge, and as an ad­ded bo­nus, VPIn­stru­ments will plant a tree on their be­half for every cart­ridge re­turned.

Em­power­ing in­dus­tries with real-time in­sights

The VP­Flow­Scope M Thermal In-line is de­signed for a wide range of in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions, in­clud­ing com­pressed air mon­it­or­ing for leak de­tec­tion and cost al­loc­a­tion. It can meas­ure in­dus­tri­al gases such as N₂, O₂, CO₂, He and Ar, as well as oth­er dry, non-cor­ros­ive gases. It can also be used for en­ergy op­tim­isa­tion and pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance in man­u­fac­tur­ing and pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies.

Teknic an­nounces its AC-in­put ClearPath™ in­teg­rated brush­less servo mo­tors (1-4 HP con­tinu­ous power) are now of­fi­cially IP66K and IP67 rated, mak­ing them ideal for de­mand­ing wash­down en­vir­on­ments. These TENV (Totally En­closed, Non-Vent­il­ated) mo­tors are de­signed to with­stand both high-pres­sure wash­downs (IP66K) and tem­por­ary sub­mer­sion in wa­ter up to 1 meter when not run­ning (IP67).

The ClearPath™ servo mo­tors are de­signed, man­u­fac­tured, and tested at Teknic’s headquar­ters in Up­state New York us­ing ad­vanced auto­ma­tion for con­sist­ent qual­ity. They meet both the U.S. Premi­um Ef­fi­ciency and European IE3 ef­fi­ciency stand­ards, are UL lis­ted and CE cer­ti­fied for elec­tric­al safety, emis­sions, and sus­cept­ib­il­ity, en­sur­ing fast, hassle-free ma­chine cer­ti­fic­a­tion. The series sup­ports di­git­al I/O, step and dir­ec­tion, and ad­vanced pro­to­cols in­clud­ing Mod­bus (via Clear­Core), Eth­er­Net/IP (via ClearLink), Eth­er­CAT (on DC mod­els), and seri­al com­mu­nic­a­tion. Each ClearPath per­man­ent mag­net (PM) mo­tor in­cludes a sealed, NEMA 6-rated servo drive (equi­val­ent to a VFD) built dir­ectly in­to the mo­tor en­clos­ure. Pre­con­figured for ad­vanced field-ori­ented con­trol (FOC), this all-in-one design elim­in­ates the need for ex­tern­al VFD-to-mo­tor cables, sig­ni­fic­antly re­du­cing con­duc­ted and ra­di­ated RF noise.