WebMag PCN Europe July 2025Issue #183 - 04/07/2025

Essential source of information for professionals in the broad field of processing industries since 2004

#2  Contents

#3  Industry News: Strategic Food Automation Alliance | Yokogawa

#4  Industry News: Fraunhofer IMM | Sensirion

#5  Industry News: Pepperl+Fuchs | ystral | Advantech

#6  Industry News: BASF | HIMA | Data Integration for Smarter Labs

#7  Automation & Communication: Ethernet-APL Proves Value in Load Test Once

#8  Automation: Partnership for Process Automation

#9  Measurement & Instrumentation: Why Sustainability Matters – Not Only in the Flow Control Supply Chain

#10  Measurement & Instrumentation: From Wet to Dry in a Hygienic, Efficient, and Sustainable Way

#11  Measurement &Instrumentation: Flexim | EGE

#12  Measurement & Instrumentation: Off-Grid Solution for Remote Environmental Monitoring

#13  Measurement & Instrumentation: Alfa Laval | VPInstruments

#14  Measurement & Instrumentation: OndoSense | Vaisala

#15  Measurement & Instrumentation: Development for Cutting-Edge Flow Measurement Solutions

#16  Motors & Drives I: NORD | Teknic

#17  Motors & Drives: ABB

#18  Index

#19  Contacts

Strategic Alliance on Food Industry Automation

The mar­ket is in­creas­ingly mov­ing to­wards con­tinu­ous line pro­duc­tion. Yet many com­pan­ies still face manu­al chal­lenges in the so-called End-of-Line area – where food products are labeled, in­spec­ted, stacked or pal­let­ized after pack­aging. Grow­ing labor short­ages are in­creas­ing the pres­sure to act. This new part­ner­ship ad­dresses these chal­lenges with a hol­ist­ic solu­tion ap­proach.

Com­ple­ment­ary ex­pert­ise for the en­tire line pro­cess

Each part­ner con­trib­utes its spe­cif­ic know-how to the al­li­ance: Bizerba is re­spons­ible for weigh­ing, la­beling, sli­cing and in­spec­tion tech­no­lo­gies and takes on the role of sys­tem in­teg­rat­or. FA­NUC con­trib­utes cut­ting-edge ro­bot­ics and con­trol tech­no­lo­gies. KIL­IV­A­TIONS brings years of ex­pert­ise in the de­vel­op­ment of ro­bot­ic ap­plic­a­tions and auto­ma­tion solu­tions. Schmalz adds ex­tens­ive know­ledge in grip­ping and va­cu­um tech­no­logy – tailored spe­cific­ally to the re­quire­ments of del­ic­ate food products.

At auto­mat­ica 2025, the four com­pan­ies presen­ted a first mile­stone of their part­ner­ship: a mod­u­lar, fully auto­mated sand­wich sta­tion for hy­gien­ic, con­tact-free hand­ling of fresh food. The sys­tem com­bines pre­cise sli­cing tech­no­logy with state-of-the-art ro­bot­ics, ad­vanced va­cu­um grip­ping sys­tems and high-pre­ci­sion dos­ing – en­abling pin­point pro­duc­tion of snacks “on de­mand”, con­tact­less and ef­fi­cient.

Fu­ture-ready auto­ma­tion

A wide range of projects is already un­der­way – fo­cus­ing on product hand­ling, case load­ing and pal­let­iz­ing in the End-of-Line area of the food in­dustry. Bizerba acts as the cent­ral point of con­tact and in­teg­rat­or of the over­all solu­tion.

Oliv­er Deifel, Dir­ect­or Glob­al Cus­tom­er Solu­tion Cen­ter at Bizerba, em­phas­izes: “This stra­tegic part­ner­ship is a per­fect match and a key ele­ment of our Bizerba strategy to de­liv­er hol­ist­ic solu­tions for the food mar­ket. Our goal is to trans­form the en­tire line pro­cess down­stream of the pack­aging ma­chine in­to con­tinu­ous, scal­able auto­ma­tion con­cepts. As the cent­ral in­teg­rat­or, we com­bine our own port­fo­lio with the spe­cial­ist know­ledge of our part­ners – ef­fi­cient, fu­ture-ready and cus­tom­er-fo­cused.”

The com­bin­a­tion of deep in­dustry know­ledge, tech­no­lo­gic­al ex­cel­lence and many years of ex­per­i­ence across in­dus­tries makes this new al­li­ance a power­ful driver for trans­form­a­tion in food pro­cessing.

Risk Reduction in Asset Integrity Management Through Use of Mobile Robots and Drones

Yokogawa Electric announces that it has formalized a long-term agreement with Shell Global Solutions International B.V. (“Shell”) to integrate and further develop technologies for utilizing robots and drones in plant monitoring and maintenance. Under the agreement, Yokogawa will add an advanced machine vision tool called Operator Round by Exception (ORE), developed by Shell, into its own OpreX™ Robot Management Core. The enhanced software service will be made available by Yokogawa to customers in the energy, chemicals, and other industries. 

ORE is a digital solution that uses machine vision and AI analytics to enable robots to autonomously perform a number of tasks in the operator round process, such as reading gauges and checking for leaks and machinery issues. It is the result of a two-year collaborative effort within Shell, which combined machine vision strategy with deep capabilities in the field of integrity management, remote site inspection, and corrosion management.

Enabling the path to autonomous operations

OpreX Robot Management Core is a key product in Yokogawa’s robot solutions. The software helps customers maintain their facilities in a safer and more efficient manner by integrating the management of various types of robots that perform plant maintenance tasks conventionally carried out by humans. When connected to a plant’s control and safety systems, the data acquired can be used to issue instructions to robots, thus enabling the first step to be taken toward autonomous plant operations. The addition of Shell’s ORE technology will significantly increase the number of use cases available to customers through OpreX Robot Management Core.

Moving forward, Yokogawa robotics operations will deploy at two Shell facilities as a pilot into how robotics and drones can deliver value through efficiencies in plant monitoring and maintenance. 

Collaboration space to solve present and future challenges

This collaboration is the first key milestone for Yokogawa working alongside Shell in the collaboration space at the Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam, which was created by Shell in 2022 to provide a platform for collaboration between companies, societal organisations, governments, and universities to work on tomorrow’s energy solutions. Shell and Yokogawa have also agreed to collaborate on an aligned R&D roadmap to further develop and enhance the machine vision technology, ensuring continuous innovation and improvement. This collaboration underscores both companies' commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions to the energy and industrial sectors. 

Masaharu Maeda, Yokogawa Electric vice president, executive officer, and head of the company’s Solutions Business Division, stated, “We are very excited to be working with Shell on this key technology field that promises to address the workforce challenges facing plant owners by significantly improving the efficiency of rounds in the field, while also reducing the inherent risk to operators. We look forward to making it available to industrial facility owners globally in the near future and contributing to safer and more efficient workplaces.” 

 “Shell & Yokogawa have a proud history of developing together to enable advanced automation solutions for our sites. With this agreement, we are taking our relationship to the next level. Robotics solutions combined with AI provide the potential to create a step change in productivity and safety,” said Gerben de Jong, CIO for Shell Integrated Gas, Upstream and Projects & Technology. 
 

Ammonia: Bright Prospects

Am­mo­nia has been tra­di­tion­ally known for fer­til­izer pro­duc­tion. In the fu­ture, it could also play a key role in the En­ergy Trans­ition as an ef­fi­cient source of hy­dro­gen and a cli­mate-friendly sub­sti­tute for fossil fuels since it can be pro­duced from ni­tro­gen and hy­dro­gen with zero car­bon emis­sions. Fur­ther­more, am­mo­nia of­fers a wealth of ad­vant­ages in terms of trans­port­a­tion and stor­age. The Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for Mi­croen­gin­eer­ing and Mi­crosys­tems IMM is work­ing on a space-sav­ing, ef­fi­cient and, above all, de­cent­ral­ized am­mo­nia crack­ing tech­no­logy in nu­mer­ous re­search projects.

“Am­mo­nia has very bright pro­spects for the sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion of our en­ergy sys­tem,” ex­plains Gun­ther Kolb, Head of the En­ergy Di­vi­sion and deputy in­sti­tute dir­ect­or of Fraunhofer IMM in Mainz. “Pro­du­cing suf­fi­cient en­ergy without emis­sions isn’t the only chal­lenge in­volved in the En­ergy Trans­ition, after all. Be­cause large amounts of green elec­tri­city can be pro­duced mainly in places with a lot of wind or sun, like Chile and Aus­tralia, low-loss trans­port­a­tion to areas with less re­new­able en­ergy avail­able is in­deed an im­port­ant factor.” Us­ing am­mo­nia can bring trans­form­at­ive ad­vant­ages in this re­gard.

Per­fectly suited to hy­dro­gen stor­age and trans­port­a­tion 

Green hy­dro­gen (H2), com­bines with ni­tro­gen (N2 ) in a 3:1 ra­tio to pro­duce am­mo­nia (NH3) and en­ergy stored and trans­por­ted in this form (i.e. am­mo­nia) un­der­goes lower losses in the sup­ply chain. Moreover, am­mo­nia has a few ad­vant­ages over hy­dro­gen for the stor­age of elec­tri­city. It re­mains li­quid at at­mo­spher­ic pres­sure and even at a pres­sure of just 7.5 bar or when it cools to only about -33°C. By con­trast, li­que­fy­ing pure hy­dro­gen re­quires feed­ing it in­to a va­cu­um at low pres­sure and lower­ing the tem­per­at­ure to -253°C, which re­quires much en­ergy. In ad­di­tion, am­mo­nia has a high­er volu­met­ric en­ergy dens­ity than li­quid hy­dro­gen, so it can carry more en­ergy per unit volume. 

“Gen­er­at­ing am­mo­nia from hy­dro­gen and ni­tro­gen only re­quires about five per­cent more en­ergy than gen­er­at­ing hy­dro­gen from green elec­tri­city,” Kolb ex­plains. “And both pro­du­cing and crack­ing am­mo­nia are al­most com­pletely car­bon-free.” Am­mo­nia is tox­ic and flam­mable, so it is clas­si­fied as haz­ard­ous and sub­ject to strin­gent reg­u­la­tions. Thanks to the ex­ist­ing high safety stand­ards, some 25 mil­lion met­ric tons of am­mo­nia are cur­rently trans­por­ted safely world­wide by ship and rail each year, chiefly for fer­til­izer pro­duc­tion.

Core hy­dro­gen net­work un­der de­vel­op­ment

Am­mo­nia must be re­con­ver­ted in­to its ori­gin­al com­pounds (i.e.ni­tro­gen and hy­dro­gen) for use in the chem­ic­al in­dustry or as an en­ergy source. Equally im­port­ant, this needs to be done with min­im­al en­ergy losses. Am­mo­nia in gas form is fed in­to a re­act­or at a tem­per­at­ure of about 600 de­grees Celsi­us, in which it comes in­to con­tact with an in­or­gan­ic nick­el-based cata­lyst with large in­tern­al sur­face. “Right now, the first big elec­tro­lys­is fa­cil­it­ies are be­ing built in loc­a­tions rich in green elec­tri­city, like Aus­tralia and Chile, to pro­duce am­mo­nia. On the European side, one of the first ma­jor crack­ing fa­cil­it­ies is un­der con­struc­tion in Rot­ter­dam at the same time, for ex­ample,” Kolb says. The plan is to sup­ply hy­dro­gen to places where it is needed via pipelines. The primary is­sue is that many po­ten­tial cus­tom­ers, es­pe­cially SMEs, lack ac­cess to hy­dro­gen pipelines. Ger­many’s hy­dro­gen in­fra­struc­ture is cur­rently be­ing built out. Plans call for a core hy­dro­gen net­work com­pris­ing about 9,000 kilo­met­ers of pipelines in total to be put in place by 2032, primar­ily by con­vert­ing nat­ur­al gas lines. However, even after that, large areas will not be con­nec­ted to the hy­dro­gen sup­ply.

Loc­al sup­ply through de­cent­ral­ized crack­ing tech­no­logy

“Our de­cent­ral­ized crack­ing tech­no­logy can close this sup­ply gap both ef­fi­ciently and with zero emis­sions for re­quired quant­it­ies of between 100 kilo­grams and 10 met­ric tons of hy­dro­gen per day,” Kolb ex­plains. “In the AM­MON­PAK­T­OR project, which re­ceived fund­ing from the state of Rhine­land-Palat­in­ate, we teamed up with the Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for In­dus­tri­al Math­em­at­ics IT­WM to de­vel­op a com­pact am­mo­nia crack­er that achieves an ef­fi­ciency of 90 per­cent dur­ing the re­con­ver­sion pro­cess through our in­nov­at­ive plate heat ex­changer tech­no­logy and in­teg­rated ex­haust gas com­bus­tion from the pres­sure swing ad­sorp­tion used for clean­ing, in com­par­is­on to 70 per­cent for con­ven­tion­al tech­no­lo­gies.”

The en­ergy needed to heat the re­act­or is gen­er­ated dir­ectly in the crack­ing re­act­or with the help of the ex­haust gas streams, so no ad­di­tion­al fuel or elec­tri­city is re­quired for crack­ing pur­poses. The AM­MON­PAK­T­OR re­act­or is also about 90 per­cent smal­ler than con­ven­tion­al tech­no­logy. This is es­pe­cially im­port­ant for mo­bile and space-con­strained ap­plic­a­tions. The use of ex­haust gas also means the tech­no­logy has a smal­ler car­bon foot­print than elec­tric­ally heated re­act­or con­cepts. “Aside from the sys­tem’s in­tern­al ex­haust gas util­iz­a­tion, the in­nov­at­ive plate heat ex­changer from Fraunhofer IMM, which is dir­ectly coated with a cata­lyst, makes all the dif­fer­ence,” Kolb says. “In­stead of the con­ven­tion­al meth­od of gen­er­at­ing the heat re­quired for crack­ing in a pipe sys­tem heated from the out­side at about 900 de­grees Celsi­us, which re­quires much en­ergy, our tech­no­logy gen­er­ates the heat right where it is needed, so our sys­tem has much bet­ter heat trans­fer. And that works out to huge en­ergy sav­ings.”

A fin­ished pro­to­type at Fraunhofer IMM’s loc­a­tion in Mainz already en­ables hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion of about 75 kg per day, about the same as the daily out­put from a 50-kilo­watt fuel cell. “That volume alone would be enough to sup­ply a small hy­dro­gen filling sta­tion, for ex­ample,” Kolb notes. The next de­vel­op­ment goal, for now, is scal­ing up to daily pro­duc­tion of up to 10 met­ric tons, in­clud­ing as part of the EU’s five-year mari­time project GAMMA and the Fraunhofer flag­ship project Am­mon­Vek­t­or, which is ex­plor­ing the en­tire green am­mo­nia value chain to make hy­dro­gen avail­able on a de­cent­ral­ized basis and at as low cost as pos­sible. This three-year project, headed by the Fraunhofer In­sti­tute for En­vir­on­ment­al, Safety, and En­ergy Tech­no­logy UM­SICHT, has been un­der way since early 2024.
 

Sensirion Connected Solutions acquires Kuva Systems

Kuva Sys­tems brings to Sensiri­on a soph­ist­ic­ated in­dus­tri­al IoT product tailored for up­stream and mid­stream oil and gas op­er­a­tions. Its tech­no­logy in­cludes a pro­pri­et­ary, low-cost in­frared op­tic­al cam­era that de­liv­ers minute-by-minute visu­al­iz­a­tion and quan­ti­fic­a­tion of meth­ane emis­sions. This cap­ab­il­ity al­lows op­er­at­ors to pin­point leak sources without false pos­it­ive alarms and to cost-ef­fect­ively con­duct re­mote root-cause ana­lys­is of emis­sion prob­lems. The Kuva solu­tion en­ables op­er­at­ors to im­ple­ment auto­mated work­flows for root-cause ana­lys­is that min­im­ize emis­sions as well as meet reg­u­lat­ory and ESG goals.

The in­teg­ra­tion of Kuva Sys­tems in­to Sensiri­on Con­nec­ted Solu­tions re­flects a strong stra­tegic fit, aligned with the Group’s long-term vis­ion to ex­pand its in­dus­tri­al IoT cap­ab­il­it­ies in emis­sions mon­it­or­ing. From a fin­an­cial per­spect­ive, the trans­ac­tion is not sig­ni­fic­ant and will not have a ma­ter­i­al im­pact on the Group’s li­quid­ity or fin­an­cial guid­ance in terms of stock ex­change re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tions.

Scal­able solu­tions

With the ac­quis­i­tion of Kuva Sys­tems, Sensiri­on Con­nec­ted Solu­tions now be­comes a one-stop shop for con­tinu­ous meth­ane emis­sions mon­it­or­ing, em­power­ing oil and gas op­er­at­ors with a fully in­teg­rated, scal­able suite of solu­tions tailored to the com­plex­ity of their sites.

“The in­teg­ra­tion of Kuva Sys­tems in­to Sensiri­on Con­nec­ted Solu­tions is a ma­jor mile­stone in our strategy to de­liv­er a full range of end-to-end solu­tions for con­tinu­ous meth­ane emis­sions mon­it­or­ing,” said Fe­lix Hoehne, Gen­er­al Man­ager of Sensiri­on Con­nec­ted Solu­tions. “By of­fer­ing in­nov­at­ive, sensor-based solu­tions, and now ad­vanced op­tic­al ima­ging, we’re en­abling oil and gas op­er­at­ors to max­im­ize per­form­ance and cov­er­age by choos­ing the right solu­tion for their site com­plex­ity and mon­it­or­ing needs—all from one, glob­ally op­er­at­ing, trus­ted part­ner.”

“We’re ex­cited to join the Sensiri­on Group to ac­cel­er­ate our mis­sion with the back­ing of a glob­al sens­ing tech­no­logy lead­er,” said Stefan Bokaem­per, CEO of Kuva Sys­tems. “This move en­ables us to scale our solu­tion and reach more op­er­at­ors who are look­ing for cost-ef­fect­ive op­er­a­tion­al work­flows to tackle their emis­sions chal­lenges.”
 

Intrinsically Safe Mobile Devices from Pepperl+Fuchs Receive Common Criteria Certification

The Pep­perl+Fuchs Group, a pi­on­eer in the field of mo­bile devices for haz­ard­ous areas, fo­cuses not only on ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion for its mo­bile devices, but also on se­cur­ity against cy­ber­at­tacks. To provide the best pos­sible pro­tec­tion against threats and min­im­ize the risk of a data breach, Pep­perl+Fuchs is in­creas­ingly re­ly­ing on in­de­pend­ent Com­mon Cri­ter­ia cer­ti­fic­a­tion for its mo­bile devices, which is one of the world's most strin­gent cy­ber­se­cur­ity cer­ti­fic­a­tions. It as­sesses and guar­an­tees that a cer­ti­fied device meets strict se­cur­ity cri­ter­ia, in­clud­ing se­cure data and com­mu­nic­a­tion man­age­ment, pro­tec­tion against un­au­thor­ized ac­cess, in­teg­rity of the op­er­at­ing sys­tem and ap­plic­a­tions, and re­si­li­ence against known cy­ber­threats.

Fo­cus on Op­er­a­tion­al Safety and Cy­ber­se­cur­ity

Com­mon Cri­ter­ia cer­ti­fic­a­tion is par­tic­u­larly re­com­men­ded for products used in de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments such as haz­ard­ous areas. That is why Pep­perl+Fuchs has had its 5G smart­phone Smart-Ex® 03 cer­ti­fied ac­cord­ingly. The smart­phone has been struc­tur­ally tested and achieves se­cur­ity level EAL2, which is a high stand­ard for a mo­bile device. Only highly se­cure of­fi­cial com­mu­nic­a­tion would re­quire EAL3 and cer­ti­fic­a­tion ac­cord­ing to a cor­res­pond­ingly stand­ard­ized pro­tec­tion pro­file. Cus­tom­ers can there­fore rest as­sured that the Smart-Ex® 03 of­fers ap­pro­pri­ate pro­tec­tion against cy­ber­threats.

In ad­di­tion to the Smart-Ex® 03, the two Sam­sung powered 5G tab­lets Tab-Ex® 04 Pro and Tab-Ex® 05 also meet Com­mon Cri­ter­ia. Pep­perl+Fuchs thus of­fers a com­pre­hens­ive port­fo­lio for mo­bile work­ers in in­dus­tri­al sec­tors that is not only cer­ti­fied for use in haz­ard­ous areas – de­pend­ing on the device and vari­ant, up to Di­vi­sion 1 and Zone 1/21 – but also meets the most strin­gent reg­u­la­tions for op­er­a­tion­al safety and di­git­al se­cur­ity.

In­ter­na­tion­al Stand­ard

A par­tic­u­lar ad­vant­age of Com­mon Cri­ter­ia cer­ti­fic­a­tion is that it is re­cog­nized in­ter­na­tion­ally by more than 30 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ger­many, the United King­dom, the Neth­er­lands, and France. This en­sures high, uni­form stand­ards, im­proves the ac­cept­ance of IT products, and in­creases con­fid­ence in se­cur­ity.

“Pro­tec­tion against cy­ber­at­tacks is play­ing an in­creas­ingly im­port­ant role, es­pe­cially for mo­bile devices,” says Jörg Har­tleb, Head of Product Man­age­ment at Pep­perl+Fuchs sub­si­di­ary ECOM In­stru­ments. “This makes it all the more im­port­ant for us to of­fer our cus­tom­ers ap­pro­pri­ately se­cured devices for use in Ex zones. Pep­perl+Fuchs is cur­rently the only sup­pli­er to of­fer Com­mon Cri­ter­ia-cer­ti­fied, in­trins­ic­ally safe mo­bile devices in its port­fo­lio. This un­der­scores the im­port­ance we place on our cus­tom­ers' se­cur­ity.”

“We are proud to have had the op­por­tun­ity to ac­com­pany P&F through this highly com­plex se­cur­ity scheme. Thanks to our ded­ic­ated con­sult­ing and the tailored sup­port we provided, we – to­geth­er with our trus­ted test­ing and cer­ti­fic­a­tion part­ners – suc­cess­fully en­abled the achieve­ment of a key in­dustry mile­stone: the Com­mon Cri­ter­ia EAL2 cer­ti­fic­a­tion. This cer­ti­fic­a­tion not only un­der­scores the tech­no­lo­gic­al soph­ist­ic­a­tion of Pep­perl+Fuchs’s products but also speaks volumes about the ex­cep­tion­al com­mit­ment and ex­pert­ise of the de­vel­op­ment teams at ECOM, Avaa Mo­bile, and Pep­perl+Fuchs. It re­flects a shared com­mit­ment to cy­ber­se­cur­ity, qual­ity, and in­nov­a­tion that drives for­ward the en­tire sec­tor. At Eurofins E&E, we be­lieve that true pro­gress in cy­ber­se­cur­ity comes from col­lab­or­a­tion, rig­or­ous stand­ards, and an un­waver­ing fo­cus on ex­cel­lence,” ad­ded Dipl.-Ing. Thami Elid­ris­si, Head of Wire­less Strategy and Cy­ber­se­cur­ity at Eurofins E&E Europe.
 

New Validation Centre for Mixing and Dispersion Technology Specialist ystral

ys­tral is in­vest­ing around 1.8 mil­lion euros in a new val­id­a­tion centre at its headquar­ters in Ballrecht­en-Dottin­gen (Ger­many). The centre will en­able the ma­chine and plant man­u­fac­turer to carry out more tests than be­fore and fur­ther im­prove the test­ing con­di­tions for its cus­tom­ers. Users do not have to be on site dur­ing the tests but can also fol­low them re­motely via livestream. 

ys­tral plans, designs and man­u­fac­tures highly ef­fi­cient mix­ing, dis­pers­ing and powder wet­ting ma­chines as well as pro­cess sys­tems. The new val­id­a­tion centre ex­pands ys­tral's test­ing ca­pa­cit­ies, as the ex­ist­ing ap­plic­a­tion tech­no­logy centre and a de­vel­op­ment labor­at­ory have reached their ca­pa­city lim­its. "The con­struc­tion of the new val­id­a­tion centre is a ma­jor step in the his­tory of our com­pany – be­cause this is ul­ti­mately the place where we come to­geth­er with our cus­tom­ers," says Peter Manke, Man­aging Dir­ect­or and co-own­er of ys­tral. The val­id­a­tion centre is sched­uled for com­ple­tion by the end of Oc­to­ber. 

Tests with flam­mable or ex­plos­ive me­dia 

In the new build­ing, pro­duc­tion com­pan­ies will have the op­por­tun­ity to test ys­tral tech­no­lo­gies, train their op­er­at­ing per­son­nel on ys­tral ma­chines and use the test­ing fa­cil­it­ies for meth­od and product de­vel­op­ment. Tests with flam­mable or ex­plos­ive me­dia are also pos­sible.

The val­id­a­tion centre of­fers nu­mer­ous ana­lys­is op­tions. Samples can be ex­amined with re­gard to vari­ous factors us­ing the op­tic­al mi­cro­scope: Both dens­ity meas­ure­ment and particle size ana­lys­is with dy­nam­ic light scat­ter­ing are pos­sible. In ad­di­tion, vis­cos­it­ies can be de­term­ined us­ing vari­ous meas­ur­ing meth­ods with and without tem­per­ing and curves of vari­ous shear rates can be plot­ted. 

Par­ti­cip­a­tion via livestream

Already today, man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies from all over the world are util­ising ys­tral's test­ing fa­cil­it­ies. With the new val­id­a­tion centre, the mix­ing tech­no­logy spe­cial­ist aims to fur­ther ex­pand its in­ter­na­tion­al pres­ence. "Users don't have to be on site dur­ing the tests, but can fol­low them re­motely via livestream," ex­plains Uwe Klaumünzner, Head of the ys­tral val­id­a­tion centre. "However, many of our cus­tom­ers still like to come back to us be­cause of our hos­pit­al­ity, our com­pre­hens­ive sup­port dur­ing the tri­als – and not least be­cause of the scen­ic sur­round­ings."
 

Reinforcing Industrial Cybersecurity at the Edge

Ad­vantech an­nounces that its Hu­man-Ma­chine In­ter­face (HMI), TPC-B520 and TPC-B300, have of­fi­cially re­ceived IEC 62443-4-2 Veri­fic­a­tion of Com­pli­ance (VOC) cer­ti­fic­a­tion from Bur­eau Ver­itas. These products rep­res­ent Ad­vantech's first HMI sys­tems to achieve com­pli­ance with this in­ter­na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity stand­ard, demon­strat­ing the stra­tegic ap­proach to ad­dress­ing in­dus­tri­al se­cur­ity threats while en­abling cus­tom­ers to pro­act­ively meet fu­ture glob­al reg­u­lat­ory re­quire­ments. This cer­ti­fic­a­tion strengthens op­er­a­tion­al se­cur­ity across smart man­u­fac­tur­ing and di­git­al factor­ies. 

Bur­eau Ver­itas is a world-lead­ing test­ing, in­spec­tion, and cer­ti­fic­a­tion or­gan­iz­a­tion spe­cial­iz­ing in in­dus­tri­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity, product veri­fic­a­tion, and man­age­ment sys­tem cer­ti­fic­a­tion, ded­ic­ated to en­han­cing product trust­wor­thi­ness and mar­ket com­pet­it­ive­ness for its cli­ents. 

Glob­al bench­mark for in­dus­tri­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity 

IEC 62443-4-2 rep­res­ents the com­pre­hens­ive cy­ber­se­cur­ity stand­ard for In­dus­tri­al Auto­ma­tion and Con­trol Sys­tems (IACS). This stand­ard defines the tech­nic­al re­quire­ments for how factor­ies, pro­duc­tion lines, en­ergy sys­tems, and in­fra­struc­ture should im­ple­ment ro­bust cy­ber­se­cur­ity pro­tec­tion. With only a few in­dus­tri­al HMI products cur­rently veri­fied as com­pli­ant with this rig­or­ous stand­ard, Ad­vantech's achieve­ment high­lights ex­cep­tion­al product cred­ib­il­ity in today's in­creas­ingly se­cur­ity-con­scious in­dus­tri­al mar­ket. 

Flex­ible design meets ad­vanced se­cur­ity 

TPC-B520 and TPC-B300 fea­ture mod­u­lar designs that ad­apt flex­ibly to vari­ous in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ment re­quire­ments while sim­ul­tan­eously en­han­cing both hard­ware spe­cific­a­tions and cy­ber­se­cur­ity pro­tec­tion. 

The sys­tems in­cor­por­ate In­tel-driv­en se­cur­ity tech­no­lo­gies in­clud­ing In­tel® Plat­form Trust Tech­no­logy (PTT), In­tel® AES-NI en­cryp­tion in­struc­tion set ac­cel­er­a­tion, and In­tel® Boot Guard tech­no­logy. These tech­no­lo­gies help sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors meet IEC 62443-4-2 stand­ard re­quire­ments for au­then­tic­a­tion, data pro­tec­tion, and sys­tem in­teg­rity while re­du­cing the com­plex­ity of sys­tem in­teg­ra­tion and cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­cesses. 

Strength­en­ing op­er­a­tion­al se­cur­ity  

By im­ple­ment­ing these IEC 62443-4-2 com­pli­ant HMI solu­tions, en­ter­prises en­able sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors (SIs) to build se­cure and re­li­able In­dus­tri­al Auto­ma­tion and Con­trol Sys­tems (IACS) ar­chi­tec­tures that ef­fect­ively safe­guard sys­tem in­teg­rity, data con­fid­en­ti­al­ity, and avail­ab­il­ity dur­ing cy­ber­se­cur­ity in­cid­ents. This com­pre­hens­ive pro­tec­tion al­lows man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions to re­spond in real-time to evolving threats and en­hance op­er­a­tion­al re­si­li­ence amid in­creas­ingly strin­gent glob­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity reg­u­la­tions. 

BASF Becomes First Renewable Ammonia Producer in Central Europe

BASF is fur­ther ex­pand­ing its sus­tain­able product port­fo­lio with two new re­new­able am­mo­nia grades: re­new­able am­mo­nia and re­new­able am­mo­nia solu­tion 24.5%. The re­new­able am­mo­nia grades are pro­duced at BASF’s Ver­bund site in Lud­wig­shafen by feed­ing hy­dro­gen in­to the am­mo­nia plant, thereby re­du­cing its nat­ur­al gas con­sump­tion. 

In BASF’s Ver­bund sys­tem, hy­dro­gen is pro­duced us­ing both fossil and re­new­able en­ergy sources. Through a mass bal­ance ap­proach, the re­new­able am­mo­nia grades are at­trib­uted re­new­able en­ergy-de­rived hy­dro­gen. These grades have been cer­ti­fied ac­cord­ing to ISCC+ and can be used as a 'drop-in' solu­tion in the same re­li­able way as con­ven­tion­al products. The re­new­able am­mo­nia grades are avail­able in the usu­al bulk quant­it­ies.

“Our biggest goal is net zero of our products. With our re­new­able am­mo­nia, we can sig­ni­fic­antly un­der­cut the product car­bon foot­print (PCF) of our oth­er low-CO2 am­mo­nia grades”, said Dr. Jens Aßmann, Vice Pres­id­ent Busi­ness Man­age­ment Am­mo­nia Value Chain and Op­er­a­tions Amino Res­ins at BASF. BASF cal­cu­lates PCFs in ac­cord­ance with the To­geth­er for Sus­tain­ab­il­ity PCF Guideline.
The de­mand for low-car­bon or “green” am­mo­nia has con­stantly in­creased in the past years and is ex­pec­ted to still rise in the fu­ture. “Our cus­tom­ers, as well as BASF’s own down­stream busi­nesses, need low-car­bon products already today to ex­plore their mar­ket”, Aßmann em­phas­ized. “We are proud to of­fer the first re­new­able am­mo­nia pro­duced in Cent­ral Europe with a very low PCF.”

The ex­pan­sion of the am­mo­nia port­fo­lio is a fur­ther step on the sus­tain­able jour­ney of BASF’s Monomers di­vi­sion. The di­vi­sion has already de­veloped one cir­cu­lar or low PCF op­tion for every ma­jor product line by 2025. The di­vi­sion’s sus­tain­able of­fer­ings are an es­sen­tial part of BASF’s path to cli­mate neut­ral­ity and net-zero CO2 emis­sions by 2050.
 

HIMA Group Continues Growth Path

HI­MA Group, a lead­ing pro­vider of safety-re­lated auto­ma­tion solu­tions, has con­tin­ued its sig­ni­fic­ant growth path in the fisc­al year 2024. Rev­en­ue in­creased to EUR 186 mil­lion, driv­en largely by in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion and an in­creas­ing fo­cus on di­git­al solu­tions. Fol­low­ing an already very suc­cess­ful fisc­al year 2023, the HI­MA Group con­tin­ued its growth mo­mentum in 2024. Rev­en­ue rose by 23 per­cent, from EUR 151 mil­lion in 2023 to EUR 186 mil­lion in 2024. Or­gan­ic growth was 12 per­cent in 2024.

Jörg de la Motte, CEO of HI­MA Group, said, “With the ac­quis­i­tion of Sella Con­trols and Origo Solu­tions in 2023 and 2024, we have brought new ex­pert­ise in­to the com­pany and strengthened our mar­ket po­s­i­tion as a key solu­tions pro­vider. In ad­di­tion, we have fur­ther ex­pan­ded our op­er­a­tions out­side Europe to sup­port de­mand­ing cus­tom­er projects loc­ally.”

In Europe, 24 per­cent of sales were gen­er­ated from Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land, 19 per­cent from oth­er EU coun­tries, 11 per­cent from the United King­dom, and 9 per­cent from Nor­way. The Asia-Pa­cific re­gion con­trib­uted 19 per­cent to sales, fol­lowed by the Middle East and In­dia with 12 per­cent and the Amer­icas with 6 per­cent.

Dr. Mi­chael Löbig, CFO of HI­MA Group, said, “The en­cour­aging sales per­form­ance is a clear sig­nal of the vi­ab­il­ity of our busi­ness mod­el. We ex­pect fur­ther sales growth in the cur­rent year, al­though the mar­ket en­vir­on­ment re­mains chal­len­ging, par­tic­u­larly in Ger­many.”

Rail­way sec­tor wit­nessed strong growth

In 2024, HI­MA re­cor­ded sub­stan­tial growth, par­tic­u­larly in the rail­way sec­tor, with one of the reas­ons be­ing new cus­tom­er projects sup­por­ted by Sella Con­trols. The rail­way in­dustry now ac­counts for 17 per­cent of sales. An ex­pan­ded product and solu­tion port­fo­lio was presen­ted for the first time at In­no­Trans 2024. It was very well re­ceived by trade vis­it­ors, par­tic­u­larly be­cause of its high flex­ib­il­ity, easy in­teg­ra­tion, cost ef­fi­ciency, and abil­ity to pro­mote the di­git­al trans­form­a­tion of rail­way trans­port.

In­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion con­tin­ues

Fol­low­ing the open­ing of a new sub­si­di­ary in Saudi Ar­a­bia in 2023, an­oth­er was es­tab­lished in In­dia in Novem­ber 2024. In ad­di­tion, new sales of­fices and ser­vice cen­ters were opened in sev­er­al coun­tries. In China, for ex­ample, a new ser­vice cen­ter com­menced op­er­a­tions in Zhanji­ang to bet­ter serve cus­tom­ers in the south­east­ern part of the coun­try. In ad­di­tion, a sub­si­di­ary was opened in Colom­bia, and a branch is planned in Peru. Fur­ther ex­pan­sion in these growth mar­kets is planned to sup­port large and de­mand­ing cus­tom­er projects loc­ally. In re­gions where the HI­MA Group does not have a dir­ect pres­ence, the part­ner pro­gram has been fur­ther ex­pan­ded.

“With these in­vest­ments in high-growth re­gions, we are fur­ther ex­pand­ing our cus­tom­er prox­im­ity and strength­en­ing our in­ter­na­tion­al po­s­i­tion,” ad­ded Jörg de la Motte.

In­vest­ments in di­git­al­iz­a­tion and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI)

The port­fo­lio has been ex­pan­ded to in­clude new di­git­al solu­tions such as cock­pits for con­trolling safety li­fe­cycle man­age­ment, SCADA+, and safeHMI. The safeHMI, de­veloped in part­ner­ship with DEUTA-Werke, re­places clas­sic, hard-wired visu­al­iz­a­tion solu­tions with se­cure, flex­ible con­trol pan­els. The long-stand­ing co­oper­a­tion with se­cur­ity spe­cial­ist gen­ua has also been fur­ther in­tens­i­fied in or­der to strengthen the re­si­li­ence of auto­ma­tion sys­tems against cy­ber threats.

Jörg de la Motte said, “Our strategy with a clear fo­cus on di­git­al­iz­a­tion un­der the motto #safety­goes­di­git­al is pay­ing off. With our di­git­al cock­pits for con­trolling safety li­fe­cycle man­age­ment, safeHMI, and SCADA+, we of­fer our cus­tom­ers real ad­ded value.”

HI­MA Group is in­creas­ingly fo­cus­ing on AI-based in­nov­a­tions and has ex­pan­ded its own in­nov­a­tion lab, ‘hi­m­alaya’, in Man­nheim to ac­com­mod­ate this. Solu­tions de­veloped here that are already in pi­lot use in­clude AI-sup­por­ted re­mote dia­gnos­is, which de­tects an­om­alies in safety con­trol sys­tems at an early stage and en­ables pro­act­ive main­ten­ance. The com­pany’s in­tern­al chat­bot, ‘Ask Paula‘, which spe­cial­izes in func­tion­al safety, will be in­tro­duced in June 2025.

Dr. Mi­chael Löbig said, “AI has great po­ten­tial for HI­MA Group, both in­tern­ally and ex­tern­ally. Our in­nov­a­tion lab, ‘hi­m­alaya’, is the right place to quickly identi­fy and tap in­to ap­plic­a­tions and po­ten­tial.”

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity as a pri­or­ity

"At HI­MA Group, sus­tain­ab­il­ity is a cent­ral com­pon­ent of our cor­por­ate philo­sophy and serves to se­cure the fu­ture of our com­pany," ex­plains Stef­fen Phil­ipp, Man­aging Part­ner of HI­MA Group. 

This is par­tic­u­larly evid­ent in the re­spons­ible use of re­sources and the pro­tec­tion of people and the en­vir­on­ment. To op­er­ate suc­cess­fully and re­spons­ibly in the long term, HI­MA pur­sues eco­nom­ic, eco­lo­gic­al, and so­cial goals. These in­clude par­ti­cip­a­tion in sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives, the es­tab­lish­ment of a glob­al CSRD team, sus­tain­able loc­a­tion and trade fair con­cepts, as well as ideas com­pet­i­tions and awards for par­tic­u­larly suc­cess­fully im­ple­men­ted projects.

"For every cus­tom­er feed­back, HI­MA makes a con­tri­bu­tion to tree plant­ing and thus makes an act­ive con­tri­bu­tion to en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion," adds Dr. Mi­chael Löbig.
 

Data Integration as Breakthrough to Smarter Labs

Spectar­is, Al­lo­trope Found­a­tion and the OPC Found­a­tion are proud to an­nounce a ma­jor mile­stone in smarter labs by ad­van­cing se­mant­ic in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity and struc­tured data stand­ards in labor­at­ory en­vir­on­ments: At the most re­cent, and now 8th hack­a­thon, which took place on April 11, 2025 in Ger­many and once again fea­tured vari­ous com­pan­ies, from device man­u­fac­tur­ers, soft­ware pro­viders to even labor­at­ory op­er­at­ors, a suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion show­cased the in­teg­ra­tion of Al­lo­trope Found­a­tion On­to­lo­gies (AFO) and the Al­lo­trope Simple Mod­el (ASM) in­to the OPC UA (Uni­fied Ar­chi­tec­ture) frame­work
 
The show­case was im­ple­men­ted by Dr. Mat­thi­as Arnold, CTO of the LADS OPC UA Joint Work­ing Group, as part of the broad­er Spectar­is ini­ti­at­ive for net­worked labor­at­ory equip­ment. The im­ple­ment­a­tion demon­strated how AFO can be dy­nam­ic­ally mapped in­to OPC UA node­sets and lever­aged for gen­er­ic or ap­plic­a­tion-spe­cif­ic la­beling of labor­at­ory device data—of­fer­ing a scal­able, se­mantic­ally rich found­a­tion for data man­age­ment.

OPC UA is a mod­ern In­dus­tri­al In­ter­net of Things (II­oT) ar­chi­tec­ture that en­ables se­cure, plat­form-in­de­pend­ent com­mu­nic­a­tion and con­tex­tu­al data ex­change across smart devices and sys­tems.

“Com­mu­nic­a­tion and data stand­ards for labor­at­ory and ana­lyt­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions are two sides of the same coin: com­mu­nic­a­tion stand­ards cap­ture live data gen­er­ated dur­ing ex­per­i­ments and res­ult cre­ation, while data stand­ards doc­u­ment the res­ults — along with crit­ic­al con­text such as who con­duc­ted the ex­per­i­ment, when, with what ma­ter­i­als, and us­ing which meth­ods. Ideally, both should be built on shared defin­i­tions of en­tit­ies and in­form­a­tion ele­ments,” said Dr. Mat­thi­as Arnold. ”For the first time, the com­bin­a­tion of OPC UA LADS and Al­lo­trope Found­a­tion frame­work en­ables seam­less in­teg­ra­tion between com­mu­nic­a­tion and doc­u­mented data. On­to­lo­gies like the AFO provide the con­cep­tu­al found­a­tion ne­ces­sary to achieve true FAIR (Find­able, Ac­cess­ible, In­ter­op­er­able, Re­usable) data across labor­at­ory en­vir­on­ments.”

The suc­cess of this in­teg­ra­tion high­lights the power of cross-or­gan­iz­a­tion­al col­lab­or­a­tion in driv­ing di­git­al trans­form­a­tion in the lab.

“The in­teg­ra­tion of Al­lo­trope mod­els in­to OPC UA rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant ad­vance­ment for se­mant­ic in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity in the lab,” said Stefan Hoppe, Pres­id­ent of the OPC Found­a­tion. “It al­lows end users to be­ne­fit from both open in­form­a­tion mod­els and an open, se­cure com­mu­nic­a­tion plat­form. This col­lab­or­a­tion ac­cel­er­ates the jour­ney to­ward har­mon­ized and fu­ture-ready labor­at­ory eco­sys­tems.”

The Al­lo­trope Simple Mod­el (ASM) was also used to rep­res­ent ana­lyt­ic­al res­ults in two formats:

  • As down­load­able files via se­cure OPC UA file ser­vices,
  • As JSON ob­jects em­bed­ded in the OPC UA, dir­ectly ac­cess­ible via OPC UA cli­ents.
     

This ap­proach main­tains a dir­ect link­age between each ASM ele­ment and its un­der­ly­ing AFO defin­i­tion, en­abling ma­chine-read­able se­mantics, trace­ab­il­ity, and align­ment with FAIR data prin­ciples.

“Open stand­ards like Al­lo­trope and OPC UA each play cru­cial roles in today’s labor­at­or­ies—en­han­cing data qual­ity and en­abling seam­less com­mu­nic­a­tion between sys­tems. But as labor­at­ory chal­lenges grow more com­plex, true in­nov­a­tion de­mands in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity across mul­tiple stand­ards. By fed­er­at­ing these open stand­ards, we un­lock a scal­able, se­mantic­ally rich found­a­tion for build­ing the con­nec­ted, di­git­al lab of the fu­ture. This col­lab­or­at­ive ap­proach not only ac­cel­er­ates pro­gress but also sets the stage for deep­er, pre-com­pet­it­ive part­ner­ships that drive in­dustry-wide trans­form­a­tion” said Janet Cheetham, Chair, Al­lo­trope Found­a­tion. 

This demon­stra­tion re­flects the grow­ing align­ment between Al­lo­trope Found­a­tion and Spectar­is over the past few years and high­lights the prac­tic­al value of har­mon­iz­ing open stand­ards across in­stru­ment­a­tion, data mod­el­ing, and lab auto­ma­tion tech­no­lo­gies.

Tech­nic­al doc­u­ment­a­tion and im­ple­ment­a­tion ar­ti­facts will be made avail­able to the broad­er com­munity to en­cour­age feed­back, re­use, and fu­ture col­lab­or­a­tion.

For more tech­nic­al in­form­a­tion please listen to the present­a­tion from Dr. Mat­thi­as Arnold, Aix­En­gin­eers here: ht­tps://op­cfound­a­tion-events.com/2025/05/01/opc-day-2025-in­ter­na­tion­al/#arnold
 
 

Ethernet-APL Proves Value in Load Test Once Again

Two years after the last suc­cess­ful multi-vendor tests, the tech­no­logy has proven its strength again in a real­ist­ic sim­u­la­tion. The load tests were tailored to meet cus­tom­er-spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments, demon­strat­ing that com­pon­ents from vari­ous man­u­fac­tur­ers can seam­lessly work to­geth­er to build a ro­bust and re­li­able sys­tem based on PROFINET over Eth­er­net-APL. Re­quire­ments were defined from the end-user per­spect­ive by the glob­al chem­ic­al com­pany BASF. On the sup­pli­er side, devices from En­dress+Haus­er, Pep­perl+Fuchs, R. Stahl, Phoenix Con­tact, and Sam­son were in­teg­rated in­to an Emer­son con­trol sys­tem and their in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity was con­firmed.

Eth­er­net-APL proves con­sist­ently high per­form­ance

Two years after the first set of suc­cess­ful tests with oth­er auto­ma­tion sys­tems, Emer­son DeltaV was in scope of the mass load test with nearly 240 En­dress+Haus­er meas­ur­ing devices, in­clud­ing flow, pres­sure, tem­per­at­ure and level sensors, as well as po­si­tion­ers from Sam­son. They were tested in a ring to­po­logy con­sist­ing of Eth­er­net-APL field switches from Pep­perl+Fuchs, Phoenix Con­tact and R. Stahl. Emer­son provided the con­trol sys­tem DeltaV DCS in­clud­ing PROFINET Sys­tem Re­dund­ancy (S2) sup­port as well as the AMS Device Man­ager Sys­tem.

The res­ults spoke for them­selves: Eth­er­net-APL per­forms re­li­ably un­der full-scale con­di­tions. The test scen­ari­os on a net­work with the max­im­um num­ber of devices suc­cess­fully veri­fied both, per­form­ance and re­li­ab­il­ity with the Pep­perl+Fuchs switches. Key per­form­ance met­rics — such as total net load and re­dund­ancy switchover times — met and even sur­passed the re­quired stand­ards.

The field switches from Phoenix Con­tact were sub­sequently sub­jec­ted to sim­il­ar tests and were able to demon­strate their per­form­ance. The pre-series switches from R. Stahl were tested as well and based on the valu­able res­ults, the op­tim­ized devices will be now avail­able for the mar­ket launch.

Gerd Nie­der­may­er, Seni­or Ex­pert Emer­ging Auto­ma­tion Tech­no­lo­gies at BASF ex­tends his grat­it­ude: “Thank you to En­dress+Haus­er for the op­por­tun­ity to con­duct the scalab­il­ity tests with our PROFINET-APL part­ners. With the help of their di­git­al field devices, we are able to op­tim­ize di­verse top­ics cen­ter­ing around en­gin­eer­ing, com­mis­sion­ing and li­fe­cycle in BASF plants and save CAPEX and OPEX costs.”

A tech­no­logy with a bright fu­ture ahead

“With the suc­cess of the re­cent scalab­il­ity test, the co­oper­at­ing com­pan­ies have again proven that the multi-vendor in­fra­struc­ture is open, fu­ture-proof and ready for the In­dus­tri­al In­ter­net of Things (II­oT)”, em­phas­izes Har­ald Müller, tech­nic­al lead of Eth­er­net-APL and dir­ect­or tech­no­logy at En­dress+Haus­er Tem­per­at­ure+Sys­tem Products. This gives plan­ners and end users fur­ther evid­ence that Eth­er­net-APL is an en­a­bler to cre­ate more flex­ible, ef­fi­cient and cost-ef­fect­ive in­dus­tri­al auto­ma­tion sys­tems, lever­aging the full scale of be­ne­fits through di­git­al­iz­a­tion. 

Karl Büttner, ex­pert product man­ager sys­tem in­teg­ra­tion and mar­ket­ing lead of Eth­er­net-APL at En­dress+Haus­er Flow, is proud and ex­cited about the proven suc­cess of this tech­no­logy: “Since 2023 we provide in­stru­ment­a­tion for Eth­er­net-APL projects world­wide. En­dress+Haus­er is pleased with the suc­cess­ful launch of the tech­no­logy, which helps our cus­tom­ers to di­git­al­ize their pro­cess plants.” 

En­dress+Haus­er’s PROFINET sup­port for Netilion is an ad­di­tion­al step to sup­port the Eth­er­net-based com­mu­nic­a­tion. It en­sures re­mote ac­cess for ex­ample to pro­cess val­ues and health dia­gnostics for all nat­ive and PROFINET-APL devices, en­sur­ing high plant avail­ab­il­ity.

Eth­er­net-APL, already backed by a wide eco­sys­tem, sees even more devices and man­u­fac­tur­ers com­ing on board. The high mar­ket de­mand and world­wide suc­cess­ful im­ple­ment­a­tions in the first me­di­um-sized and large projects prove that Eth­er­net-based field com­mu­nic­a­tion in pro­cess auto­ma­tion has a bright fu­ture.
 

Partnership for Process Automation

A com­pet­ent part­ner in pro­cess auto­ma­tion is not only char­ac­ter­ized by tech­nic­al ex­pert­ise, but also re­quires an over­all un­der­stand­ing of the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments of an in­dustry, in-depth know­ledge of ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions, glob­al project ex­per­i­ence, and the abil­ity to de­liv­er solu­tions re­li­ably, in com­pli­ance with stand­ards, and on time.

In ad­di­tion to clas­sic con­trol tech­no­logy, com­mu­nic­a­tion in­fra­struc­ture in par­tic­u­lar is be­com­ing in­creas­ingly im­port­ant. The di­git­al­iz­a­tion of in­dus­tri­al pro­cesses – for ex­ample, through Eth­er­net-APL – and the in­teg­ra­tion of HMI sys­tems in the field place new re­quire­ments on plan­ning and im­ple­ment­a­tion. In haz­ard­ous areas in par­tic­u­lar, sys­tems must not only be tech­nic­ally safe, but also fully in­teg­rated in­to ex­ist­ing plant con­cepts.

Tech­nic­al de­cision-makers are of­ten faced with the chal­lenge of com­bin­ing a wide range of in­ter­faces, sys­tems, and re­quire­ments. Close co­oper­a­tion with an ex­per­i­enced part­ner from the design phase on­wards is there­fore es­sen­tial – from the se­lec­tion of suit­able en­clos­ures and com­pon­ents to mech­an­ic­al and elec­tric­al design, to cer­ti­fic­a­tion, doc­u­ment­a­tion, and lo­gist­ics. Ideally, this is all provided from a single source with a cent­ral con­tact per­son, even for in­ter­na­tion­al projects.

Solu­tions Based on Ex­per­i­ence

Pep­perl+Fuchs has un­der­taken a prac­tice-ori­ented ap­proach in pro­cess auto­ma­tion for many years. Known for its ex­pert­ise in ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion, the com­pany com­bines stand­ard products with project-spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments – from simple ter­min­al boxes to com­plex con­trol­ler or Eth­er­net-APL en­clos­ure solu­tions for Zone 1/21 and Class I, Di­vi­sion 1.

The suc­cess of these sys­tems is not only based on their tech­nic­al design, but also on close co­oper­a­tion with cus­tom­ers – from the plan­ning phase to de­liv­ery. This res­ults in solu­tions that im­press both tech­nic­ally and eco­nom­ic­ally.

A Broad Port­fo­lio as the Basis for In­di­vidu­al Sys­tems

To be a suc­cess­ful part­ner of this kind, it is cru­cial to be able to rely on a flex­ible and com­pre­hens­ive port­fo­lio that meets the var­ied re­quire­ments in in­dustry. Pep­perl+Fuchs of­fers a wide range of products that can serve as the basis for cus­tom­ized solu­tions. 

The solu­tions port­fo­lio in­cludes:

  • Con­trol and dis­tri­bu­tion sys­tems in flameproof (Ex d) or in­creased safety (Ex e) ver­sions
  • Cus­tom­er-spe­cif­ic ter­min­al and junc­tion boxes
  • Re­mote I/O and field­bus sys­tems
  • Eth­er­net-APL en­clos­ure solu­tions
  • HMI solu­tions 
  • Pres­sur­ized en­clos­ure solu­tions
  • Switch cab­in­ets for in­ter­face tech­no­logy 
  • WLAN ac­cess points 
     

This wide range of products en­ables cus­tom­ers to find the cor­rect tech­no­logy for their par­tic­u­lar pro­cess. In ad­di­tion to many in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents and stand­ard products, the com­pany can use con­fig­ur­at­ors and en­gin­eer­ing teams to com­bine and ad­apt the com­pon­ents in an en­clos­ure solu­tion ac­cord­ing to the cus­tom­er's re­quire­ments. This res­ults in cus­tom sys­tem solu­tions that are op­tim­ally tailored to the re­quire­ments of the re­spect­ive ap­plic­a­tion.

Glob­al Im­ple­ment­a­tion, Ad­ap­ted Loc­ally

These cus­tom­er-spe­cif­ic solu­tions are con­ceived and im­ple­men­ted in Solu­tion En­gin­eer­ing Cen­ters (SECs), which are stra­tegic­ally loc­ated world­wide. In ad­di­tion to the European sites in Ger­many and Italy, there are SECs in China, the USA, Aus­tralia, and In­dia. These act as tech­nic­al ser­vice pro­viders with­in the com­pany struc­ture and take over all phases of a project from con­sult­ing and en­gin­eer­ing to ma­ter­i­al pro­cure­ment, project man­age­ment, and con­struc­tion, to cer­ti­fic­a­tion and pack­aging. The close in­ter­ac­tion with the rel­ev­ant loc­al sales or­gan­iz­a­tions cre­ates a flex­ible sys­tem that com­bines glob­al stand­ards with loc­al ad­apt­a­tion—a ma­jor ad­vant­age for projects that are planned in­ter­na­tion­ally but im­ple­men­ted re­gion­ally. 

An­oth­er ad­vant­age is the high level of in-house pro­duc­tion. In ad­di­tion to its own foundry with gas and elec­tric fur­naces where Ex d en­clos­ures are man­u­fac­tured and tested to the highest qual­ity stand­ards, the com­pany also has a pro­duc­tion area with equip­ment such as a press brake and a brush­ing ma­chine for the pro­duc­tion of Ex e stain­less-steel en­clos­ures. These form the basis for a wide range of en­clos­ure solu­tions for cus­tom­ers from the pro­cess auto­ma­tion sec­tor.

Two Real-Life Ex­amples

Solu­tions of this nature are used world­wide. Be­low are two ex­amples to il­lus­trate this.

Ex d Con­trol­ler for Crude Oil Va­por Pres­sure Ana­lys­is

In crude oil pro­cessing, ana­lys­is of the va­por pres­sure is a key pro­cess step. This value sig­ni­fic­antly in­flu­ences the trans­port and stor­age of the crude oil. However, to carry out this ana­lys­is, the crude oil of­ten has to be trans­por­ted through hun­dreds of meters of pipelines. Due to its vis­cous prop­er­ties, boost­er pumps are re­quired—of­ten in­stalled in Zone 1.

Pep­perl+Fuchs im­ple­men­ted 12 con­trol solu­tions in a flameproof en­clos­ure (Ex d) for an Aus­trali­an cus­tom­er. In ad­di­tion to trans­formers, pro­tect­ive devices, and fre­quency in­vert­ers, the sys­tems also in­cluded in­trins­ic­ally safe mod­ules for con­trolling field devices. All pre-as­sembled on a sup­port frame, fully cer­ti­fied, and ready for im­me­di­ate use. To­geth­er with the boost­er pumps, the sup­plied con­trol sys­tems form an es­pe­cially im­port­ant part of the in­fra­struc­ture.

Purge and Pres­sur­iz­a­tion for Hy­dro­gen Ana­lys­is Tech­no­logy

An­oth­er ex­ample is the in­teg­ra­tion of ana­lys­is devices for hy­dro­gen qual­ity con­trol at gas sta­tions in the United States. Pre­cise ana­lys­is is es­sen­tial to en­sure that the hy­dro­gen meets all qual­ity re­quire­ments. This is es­pe­cially im­port­ant for hy­dro­gen pur­ity, be­cause con­tam­in­a­tion in the hy­dro­gen sup­ply can lead to dam­age to sens­it­ive com­pon­ents such as fuel cells and even en­tire fuel cell stacks, which are af­fected by early age­ing or de­fects. Since the ana­lys­is devices used do not have the ne­ces­sary ap­provals for haz­ard­ous areas, spe­cial en­clos­ure solu­tions with purge and pres­sur­iz­a­tion are re­quired. This en­ables the sys­tems to be made "Ex-com­pat­ible" and to re­li­ably ana­lyze the hy­dro­gen. In this in­stance, a stain­less-steel en­clos­ure is equipped with sys­tem com­pon­ents for purge and pres­sur­iz­a­tion such as a con­trol unit, valve, and pres­sure reg­u­la­tion, to cre­ate an ex­plo­sion-pro­tec­ted in­tern­al en­vir­on­ment.

The con­trol unit con­tinu­ously mon­it­ors the over­pres­sure in the en­clos­ure and auto­mat­ic­ally in­ter­venes in the event of a fault—either via a warn­ing mes­sage or by safely shut­ting down the sys­tem. This solu­tion en­ables the use of high-pre­ci­sion ana­lys­is devices even in haz­ard­ous loc­a­tions and there­fore makes a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to the safety of the re­fuel­ing op­er­a­tions. To­geth­er with its cus­tom­ers, Pep­perl+Fuchs has suc­cess­fully de­veloped and im­ple­men­ted solu­tions of this nature to mon­it­or the hy­dro­gen qual­ity dir­ectly at fuel pumps. 

Con­clu­sion: Solu­tions Emerge from Dia­log

The chal­lenges in pro­cess auto­ma­tion are as di­verse as the ap­plic­a­tions them­selves. To be suc­cess­ful in the long term, a com­pany need more than just tech­no­logy. It needs a part­ner that un­der­stands pro­cesses, trans­lates re­quire­ments, and de­vel­ops solu­tions that work re­li­ably even un­der dif­fi­cult con­di­tions. Com­pan­ies such as Pep­perl+Fuchs demon­strate how tech­nic­al ex­pert­ise, a glob­al pres­ence, and col­lab­or­at­ive think­ing can be com­bined to cre­ate sys­tems and solu­tions that are not only com­pli­ant with stand­ards, but also prac­tic­al and fu­ture-ori­ented. 
 

Why Sustainability Matters – Not Only in the Flow Control Supply Chain

The main pri­or­it­ies for en­gin­eers in­volved in the design or main­ten­ance of ap­plic­a­tions that rely on flu­id or gas flow con­trol are typ­ic­ally centred around op­er­a­tion­al per­form­ance, ease of design in­teg­ra­tion, and long-term re­li­ab­il­ity. While these cri­ter­ia must be achieved, the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency im­per­at­ive is in­creas­ingly im­port­ant. It’s vi­tal for ap­plic­a­tion end users to min­im­ise en­ergy costs, while the ad­vant­ages that achieve this can also help pro­cure­ment and sus­tain­ab­il­ity gov­ernance teams ap­prove man­u­fac­tur­ers with­in their sup­ply chain.

For ex­ample, Bürkert’s Kick and Drop coils with­in solen­oid valves, have been de­signed to ad­dress the need for re­duced en­ergy use. A unique design min­im­ises the power re­quire­ments to hold open the valve plun­ger, de­liv­er­ing en­ergy sav­ings of up to 80%. In a sim­il­ar way, Twin­Power valves, ideal for ap­plic­a­tions that re­main open for long peri­ods, only re­quire power to move the valve, rather than main­tain­ing its po­s­i­tion.

Ef­fi­cient con­trol

In a flow con­trol sys­tem, cost ef­fi­ciency doesn’t just de­pend on the en­ergy re­quired to ac­tu­ate the valve, but it also relates to the me­dia it­self. In a dos­ing ap­plic­a­tion, for ex­ample, sur­face acous­tic wave (SAW) tech­no­logy can achieve the most pre­cise flow meas­ure­ments. Highly rel­ev­ant with­in the pharma and food & bever­age sec­tors, Bürkert’s FLOWave flow meas­ure­ment sensor op­tim­ises in­gredi­ent use for batch con­trol ef­fi­ciency. This not only lowers flu­id con­sump­tion and costs but also safe­guards product qual­ity and re­duces waste.

In ad­di­tion to me­dia con­trol, switch­ing from pneu­mat­ic­ally powered valves to elec­tro­mot­ive pro­cess valves, par­tic­u­larly for large ori­fice ap­plic­a­tions, can also en­hance cost and en­ergy sav­ings. This ap­proach re­moves the in­her­ent in­ef­fi­ciency of com­pressor-driv­en pneu­mat­ic sys­tems, in­clud­ing the fluc­tu­at­ing pro­cess pres­sures to pre­vent valve move­ment, which con­sumes fur­ther en­ergy.

The ma­ter­i­als and design of the valves them­selves also im­pact en­vir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity, as well as cost. This is par­tic­u­larly true for ap­plic­a­tions that re­quire valves con­struc­ted from stain­less steel, which is not only ex­pens­ive, but is also en­ergy in­tens­ive to pro­duce. To min­im­ise the im­pact, Bürkert’s stain­less steel valves are man­u­fac­tured with hy­dro­form­ing, where a tube is filled with wa­ter-oil emul­sion and pres­sur­ised with­in a mould to form the shape. This pro­cess uses much less ma­ter­i­al while re­tain­ing the ori­gin­al thick­ness of the tube, en­sur­ing suit­ab­il­ity for high pres­sures. Sim­il­arly, tech­no­logy with­in Bürkert’s flow con­trol devices has also been de­signed to min­im­ise stain­less steel use. For ex­ample, the FLOWave flow meas­ure­ment sensor weighs just a few kilos, com­pared to a Cori­ol­is sensor that can tip the scales at around 50kg.

While ef­fi­cient flow con­trol devices, man­u­fac­tured with low im­pact ma­ter­i­als and pro­cesses, dir­ectly af­fect costs and car­bon foot­print for the end user, the wider en­vir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity com­mit­ments of tech­no­logy sup­pli­ers should also be a fo­cus, par­tic­u­larly for pro­cure­ment teams.

Glob­ally, Bürkert has a pub­licly stated goal to be­come CO2-neut­ral by 2028, rep­res­ent­ing a real re­duc­tion of 33% com­pared to its 2023 emis­sions. This will be achieved by the in­creased pro­duc­tion of green elec­tri­city at Bürkert’s sites, com­bined with en­ergy stor­age, as well as the re­li­ance on more ef­fi­cient build­ing tech­no­logy. De­car­bon­isa­tion will also in­volve the fur­ther elec­tri­fic­a­tion of com­pany mo­bil­ity. Already in the UK, the field en­gin­eer­ing & ap­plic­a­tions team rely on an elec­tric car fleet. To sup­port cus­tom­ers in their gen­er­al ap­prov­al of their sup­pli­ers, the pro­cess and res­ults of this en­vir­on­ment­al com­mit­ment are fully val­id­ated.

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategy

En­vir­on­ment­al com­mit­ments are es­sen­tial, but they are not the only sus­tain­ab­il­ity im­per­at­ive. Fol­low­ing the UN Sus­tain­ab­il­ity De­vel­op­ment Goals, Bürkert’s eth­os also has a strong fo­cus on eco­nom­ic and so­cial sus­tain­ab­il­ity. This in­cludes cre­at­ing a fair work­ing en­vir­on­ment and en­sur­ing a healthy work-life situ­ation for the glob­al Bürkert team. At the same time, the or­gan­isa­tion is also fo­cussed on in­creas­ing di­versity, not only to en­sure equal­ity in so­ci­ety, but also to im­prove de­cision-mak­ing pro­cesses and in­crease in­nov­at­ive strength glob­ally. Fur­ther in­form­a­tion on Bürkert’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­ab­il­ity can be found here.

Help­ing Bürkert achieve these goals is its found­a­tion as a fam­ily-owned busi­ness – as it still re­mains today. This gives the com­pany a nimble­ness to make de­cisions, based on what it be­lieves is right, for its em­ploy­ees and their fam­il­ies, its cus­tom­ers, and the world with­in which the com­pany op­er­ates. Re­spons­ib­il­ity for sus­tain­ab­il­ity has al­ways been deeply rooted in the Bürkert com­pany cul­ture, and the dir­ect ac­tion the com­pany takes qual­i­fies this com­mit­ment.
 

From Wet to Dry in a Hygienic, Efficient, and Sustainable Way

Milk powder is an in­dis­pens­able in­gredi­ent in the glob­al food in­dustry. The ver­sat­il­ity of this product makes it an es­sen­tial in­gredi­ent for many man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses in fields such as baby food, chocol­ate, and baked goods. Pre­cise and hy­gien­ic meas­ure­ment tech­niques are es­sen­tial to meet in­creas­ing re­quire­ments. In­nov­at­ive solu­tions from JUMO en­able man­u­fac­tur­ers to make milk powder pro­duc­tion ef­fect­ive, safe, and re­source-ef­fi­cient.

A look in­to pro­duc­tion

Spray dry­ing has be­come the stand­ard pro­cess for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of milk powder. In this pro­cess, li­quid milk is forced through fine nozzles in­to a stream of hot air un­der high pres­sure. Tem­per­at­ures of up to 200 °C cause the wa­ter to evap­or­ate in a frac­tion of a second, leav­ing be­hind a fine powder. To in­crease ef­fi­ciency, the gen­er­ated pro­cess heat is re­cycled for such uses as pre­heat­ing the milk be­fore it enters the spray tower.

To en­sure that the pro­cess runs smoothly and safely, crit­ic­al para­met­ers such as tem­per­at­ure, pres­sure, mois­ture, and con­duct­iv­ity must be closely mon­itored and con­trolled. Meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy plays a cent­ral role here – both in hy­gien­ic wet areas and in sens­it­ive dry areas.

Hy­giene and pre­ci­sion in wet areas

Be­fore the ac­tu­al dry­ing pro­cess, the milk un­der­goes sev­er­al pro­cessing steps that re­quire the highest stand­ards of hy­giene. Here, JUMO sensors that have been spe­cific­ally de­veloped for the re­quire­ments of the food in­dustry are used.

  • CTI-750: a high-pre­ci­sion con­duct­iv­ity sensor that en­ables ac­cur­ate con­trol of milk qual­ity.
  • di­giL­ine pH: en­ables re­li­able meas­ure­ment of the pH value to en­sure op­tim­um con­di­tions for dry­ing.
  • PEKA pro­cess con­nec­tion sys­tem: EHEDG-cer­ti­fied, cav­ity-free, and easy to clean – ideal for ap­plic­a­tions in which hy­giene is crit­ic­al.
     

Ro­bust ma­ter­i­als, such as 316L stain­less steel and FDA-com­pli­ant seals, guar­an­tee res­ist­ance to clean­ing agents and acids that are used in CIP (clean­ing in place) pro­cesses. 

Safety and ef­fi­ciency in dry areas

In dry areas – es­pe­cially in and around the spray tower – ex­plo­sion pro­tec­tion and pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity are key pri­or­it­ies. Here, dust con­tain­ing starch and sug­ar (both of which are found in milk powder) poses a po­ten­tial danger.

  • Wtrans: a wire­less ther­mo­met­er with ATEX ap­prov­al that re­li­ably trans­mits tem­per­at­ure data from po­ten­tially ex­plos­ive areas.
  • dTRANS p20: pre­cise pres­sure meas­ure­ment with ex­cel­lent long-term sta­bil­ity, which is also suit­able for haz­ard­ous areas.
     

Thanks to mod­ern wire­less sys­tems such as the JUMO Wtrans T Ex, com­plex cabling is no longer ne­ces­sary, which re­duces in­stall­a­tion costs and in­creases flex­ib­il­ity.

Ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able pro­cesses

A par­tic­u­lar high­light of JUMO tech­no­logy is the in­teg­ra­tion of di­git­al com­mu­nic­a­tion in­ter­faces such as IO-Link or Mod­bus. These en­able seam­less in­teg­ra­tion in­to mod­ern pro­duc­tion fa­cil­it­ies and sup­port auto­ma­tion through smart data ana­lys­is.

Through pre­cise meas­ure­ment and con­trol of cent­ral pro­cess para­met­ers, JUMO sensors con­trib­ute sig­ni­fic­antly to con­serving re­sources and en­sur­ing con­sist­ently high product qual­ity.

JUMO's in­nov­at­ive solu­tions en­able dair­ies and food man­u­fac­tur­ers to meet the high de­mands of today's food in­dustry. Hy­gien­ic, ef­fi­cient, and sus­tain­able – this is how JUMO designs milk powder pro­duc­tion for a safe and suc­cess­ful fu­ture.

Versatile Ultrasonic Flow Meter Series for Gases and Liquids

Emer­son an­nounced the Flex­im FLUX­US® / PI­OX® 731 series, a new range of non-in­trus­ive, clamp-on, ul­tra­son­ic flow meters de­signed to of­fer great­er flex­ib­il­ity, con­veni­ence and avail­ab­il­ity. The nine mod­els in the 731 series fea­ture high-per­form­ance volu­met­ric and mass flow sens­ing tech­no­lo­gies and a ro­bust, func­tion­al design, provid­ing ac­cur­ate and re­li­able meas­ure­ments for both li­quids and gases.

Pro­cess man­u­fac­tur­ers of­ten need to make per­man­ent or tem­por­ary flow meas­ure­ments in areas where pen­et­ra­tion in­to the pro­cess me­dia would be prob­lem­at­ic be­cause it would typ­ic­ally re­quire a pro­duc­tion in­ter­rup­tion, along with high costs and down­time. Al­though some solu­tions are avail­able, not many meet the per­form­ance re­quire­ments for a wide range of de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions.

No pro­cess me­dia pres­sure lim­it­a­tions

To ad­dress these and oth­er is­sues, the Flex­im 731 series provides non-in­trus­ive volu­met­ric or mass flow meas­ure­ments with no pro­cess me­dia pres­sure lim­it­a­tions, en­sur­ing cost-ef­fect­ive op­er­a­tion and low own­er­ship costs. Mod­u­lar hard­ware en­ables the re­duc­tion of as­sembly time by 20% for faster de­liv­ery, and in­teg­ra­tion with most up-to-date soft­ware and hard­ware is straight­for­ward.

The 731 series provides dis­turb­ance cor­rec­tion for en­hanced ac­cur­acy in chal­len­ging con­di­tions, such as dis­turbed flows. It also provides the Ad­vanced Meter Veri­fic­a­tion fea­ture to val­id­ate meter per­form­ance, Wet Gas Cor­rec­tion to en­sure ac­cur­ate gas stream meas­ure­ments, and the Dy­nam­ic Gas Meter fea­ture for pre­cise mass and volume cor­rec­tion. Vari­ous mod­els are avail­able to meet vary­ing ap­plic­a­tion re­quire­ments. In­clud­ing a gen­er­al pur­pose ver­sion that in­cludes dis­turb­ance cor­rec­tion and the Dy­nam­ic Gas Meter, one for pipelines and ter­min­als provid­ing leak de­tec­tion and in­teg­rity mon­it­or­ing, along with mass flow and dens­ity meas­ure­ments. 

Meet­ing ATEx and IECEx stand­ards

All mod­els in­clude an 84mm wide x 45mm high back­lit dis­play with 240 x128 pixel res­ol­u­tion for easy read­ab­il­ity, syn­chron­ised chan­nel av­er­aging for pre­cise gas meas­ure­ments, and a wide power sup­ply range of 0-240 volts AC +/-10% at 50-60 Hz or 11-32 volts DC. A USB-C port is provided as a ser­vi­cing in­ter­face for pro­gram­ming and data ex­trac­tion. Meet­ing ATEx (Atmosphéres Ex­plos­ibles), IECEx (In­ter­na­tion­al Elec­tro­tech­nic­al Com­mis­sion Sys­tem for Cer­ti­fic­a­tion to Stand­ards Re­lat­ing to Equip­ment for Use in Ex­plos­ive At­mo­spheres), and EAC (Euras­i­an Con­form­ity) stand­ards, with FM (Fact­ory Mu­tu­al) cer­ti­fic­a­tion ex­pec­ted in April 2025, the Flex­im 731 series is de­signed for glob­al use and com­pli­ance.
 

Rugged Level Sensors for Hazardous Areas

EGE-Elektronik man­u­fac­tures in­trins­ic­ally safe ca­pa­cit­ive level con­trol­lers for haz­ard­ous areas with po­ten­tially ex­plos­ive gas at­mo­spheres. The com­pact KGFTa-series sensors fea­ture a high tem­per­at­ure sta­bil­ity of -20 °C to 180 °C. They have the ATEX and IECEx ap­provals for in­stall­a­tion in zone 0 and in par­ti­tion walls between zone 0 and zone 1. 

Suit­able for ag­gress­ive me­dia

The KKa 030 Ex ex­tern­al amp­li­fi­er, which is also ap­proved for zone 0 and zone 1, en­ables re­mote para­met­er­iz­a­tion out­side the high-tem­per­at­ure area. The sys­tem con­sist­ing of KGFTa and KKa 030 is con­nec­ted to an IKMb 123... ana­lys­is device, which provides an in­trins­ic­ally safe power sup­ply. The series in­cludes sensors with G1/4 and G1/2 threads. The level con­trol­lers made of stain­less steel 1.4571 fea­ture IP68 pro­tec­tion, a PEEK meas­ur­ing tip and a PT­FE cable. They are there­fore also suit­able for mon­it­or­ing ag­gress­ive me­dia. Typ­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions in­clude level mon­it­or­ing of pro­cess flu­ids in chem­ic­al and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al pro­duc­tion.

Off-Grid Solution for Remote Environmental Monitoring

Situ­ated with­in an Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beauty (AONB) in Corn­wall, Loe Pool is fed by the river Cober and a num­ber of smal­ler streams. Both the pool and the bar are des­ig­nated a Site of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic In­terest (SSSI) due to their unique wild­life and hab­it­at.

As the most south­erly town on the is­land of Great Bri­tain, Hel­ston sits on the banks of the River Cober, up­stream of Loe Pool, and has ex­per­i­enced sig­ni­fic­ant flood­ing in the past. Loe Pool is Corn­wall’s largest nat­ur­al fresh­wa­ter lake, pro­tec­ted by Loe Bar which is ap­prox­im­ately half a mile in length. However, the bar is geo­graph­ic­ally re­mote and ex­posed to the fe­ro­city of the At­lantic Ocean, so en­vir­on­ment­al mon­it­or­ing equip­ment needs to be able to op­er­ate in harsh con­di­tions, without mains power, and with lim­ited com­mu­nic­a­tions con­nectiv­ity.

His­tor­ic­ally, Hel­ston’s flood risk res­ul­ted from back­ing up in the Loe Pool and the River Cober, so al­le­vi­ation meas­ures primar­ily in­cluded the emer­gency cre­ation of a re­lief chan­nel in the bar. However, this was ob­vi­ously a haz­ard­ous op­er­a­tion, so in the 1980s and en­gin­eered out­flow was cre­ated in the form of a con­crete pipe, in­stalled to op­er­ate as an over­flow for the pool. The pipe al­lowed ex­cess wa­ter to drain from the pool through the bar, but was over­whelmed by river flows dur­ing high flow events. This ne­ces­sit­ated ex­pens­ive and in­vas­ive over-pump­ing op­er­a­tions that also had a sig­ni­fic­ant lead-in time to bring all the equip­ment to such a re­mote site. In ad­di­tion, as a res­ult of high tides and ex­treme weath­er, the out­fall of the pipe was largely blocked by sand and shingle, which had to be re­moved dur­ing peri­ods of flood risk. This pro­cess was in­ef­fi­cient, costly and time-con­sum­ing, so a second en­gin­eered out­fall was de­veloped.

En­gin­eered out­flow solu­tion

The second, more ad­vanced out­flow was built in 2020 to largely elim­in­ate the re­quire­ment for over-pump­ing. The ad­di­tion­al ca­pa­city provided by the second pipe meant that the pool drains by grav­ity rather than costly and car­bon-in­tens­ive pump­ing op­er­a­tions. “The new out­flow fea­tured pen­stocks, pumps, flow mon­it­ors and re­mote com­mu­nic­a­tions, and was de­veloped to provide a num­ber of im­port­ant ad­vant­ages,” says Will Han­cock, Project Lead at the EA. 

Level and flow mon­it­ors were in­stalled in the River Cober, the Loe Pool and in the new out­fall pipe. “This provided us with the abil­ity to mon­it­or the site re­motely,” Will ex­plains, “which meant that less site vis­its were ne­ces­sary, lower­ing project costs and car­bon foot­print, and en­abling us to re­spond to flood risk in a faster and more timely man­ner.”

The new mon­it­or­ing sys­tem was de­signed to de­tect the ex­cess­ive ac­cu­mu­la­tion of wa­ter in the pool, so that the second out­flow could be im­ple­men­ted when ne­ces­sary. Un­der such cir­cum­stances, an ex­cav­at­or is used to ex­pose and open the out­fall cov­er be­fore the sluice gate is opened and the pumps are al­lowed to re­move wa­ter from the pool, for dis­charge to the beach. Over the last 5 years, the second out­fall has been opened on two oc­ca­sions.

New flow mon­it­or­ing tech­no­logy

Pri­or to the in­stall­a­tion of the new mon­it­or­ing sys­tem from Nivus, flow was meas­ured in Hel­ston and in the dis­charge pipes with a tra­di­tion­al Dop­pler flow meter, and the fail­ure of one of these units provided the EA with an op­por­tun­ity to re­view and up­grade the mon­it­ors.

Ex­plain­ing the eval­u­ation pro­cess, Will Han­cock says: “These meas­ure­ment in­stru­ments per­form a crit­ic­ally im­port­ant func­tion. Not only do they help man­age the Loe Pool to lower flood risk, they also feed data in­to our flood fore­cast­ing mod­el, so it was es­sen­tial that we util­ise ac­cur­ate, re­li­able in­stru­ment­a­tion.

The EA has ex­tens­ive ex­per­i­ence with flow meas­ure­ment tech­no­lo­gies, in­clud­ing the cross-cor­rel­a­tion meth­od from Nivus, so it was de­term­ined that this would be the ap­pro­pri­ate solu­tion for the dis­charge pipes and the river mon­it­or. The key ad­vant­age to this area ve­lo­city flow meas­ure­ment tech­nique over the in­stru­ments which it re­placed is that it provides a 3-di­men­sion­al flow pro­file that is cal­cu­lated in real-time to provide re­pro­du­cible and veri­fi­able flow val­ues in full or par­tially filled chan­nels or pipes. Older Dop­pler meth­ods are less ac­cur­ate be­cause they only meas­ure 2-di­men­sion­al flow. 

The meth­od util­ises particles, min­er­als or gas bubbles which act as re­flect­ors with­in the wa­ter body. Re­flec­tions are saved as im­ages or echo pat­terns, and com­pared with a fur­ther scan which is con­duc­ted a few mil­li­seconds later. Ve­lo­city is de­term­ined by meas­ur­ing the beam angle of the po­s­i­tions of un­am­bigu­ously iden­ti­fi­able re­flect­ors. The meth­od pro­duces highly ac­cur­ate read­ings without the need for ad­di­tion­al cal­ib­ra­tion.

Ex­plain­ing the back­ground to the de­cision to in­vest in a cross-cor­rel­a­tion solu­tion, Will says: “The Nivus equip­ment has been as­sessed by the EA, and we now run both fixed and port­able ver­sions of the tech­no­logy. Nivus is also a Frame­work Part­ner, so the pro­ced­ure for im­ple­ment­ing this solu­tion was re­l­at­ively simple, des­pite the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges that this site presen­ted.”

Uniquely chal­len­ging en­vir­on­ment

As a re­mote loc­a­tion Loe Bar does not be­ne­fit from easy ac­cess to util­it­ies, so it was ne­ces­sary for the mon­it­or­ing solu­tion to be able to op­er­ate off-grid; sol­ar/bat­tery power was there­fore ad­op­ted. The solu­tion also needed to be suf­fi­ciently rugged to be un­af­fected by its prox­im­ity to the beach. “Nivus pro­posed a com­plete low-power solu­tion, which cal­cu­lated the power re­quire­ments and spe­cified the sol­ar gen­er­a­tion ca­pa­city that would be ne­ces­sary to en­sure con­tinu­ous mon­it­or­ing in all weath­ers,” Will ex­plains. “The sol­ar pan­els were fit­ted at an angle to the sea, which was less ideal for power gen­er­a­tion, but ne­ces­sary to avoid po­ten­tial dam­age from sand-blast­ing.”

Spe­cial low-power ver­sions of the Nivus equip­ment were also de­ployed. For ex­ample, a Nivus NF750 trans­mit­ter em­ploys low-power elec­tron­ics, and con­sump­tion is min­im­ised by set­ting the mon­it­or to sleep, then wake up after 15 minutes to take a meas­ure­ment, and then re­turn to sleep mode.

For re­dund­ancy pur­poses, two Nivus CS2 bed-moun­ted, cross-cor­rel­a­tion sensors were fit­ted in each of the dis­charge pipes, and the same dual-sensor re­dund­ancy ar­range­ments were es­tab­lished in the river flow mon­it­or at Hel­ston, al­beit in a cross-chan­nel con­fig­ur­a­tion.

The EA’s stand­ard re­mote com­mu­nic­a­tion equip­ment was in­stalled in­side a kiosk along with the trans­mit­ter, a mul­ti­plex­er, re­chargeable bat­ter­ies and a sol­ar power reg­u­lat­or.

Ac­cess to the mon­it­or­ing site is also lim­ited. The closest that EA vehicles can ac­cess is 200m away, so any site vis­its would ne­ces­sit­ate manu­al port­ab­il­ity for any ne­ces­sary equip­ment. Ac­cess to the mon­it­or­ing loc­a­tions with­in the pipes is also po­ten­tially haz­ard­ous – ne­ces­sit­at­ing breath­ing ap­par­at­us and oth­er PPE. For­tu­nately, there­fore, the newly in­stalled mon­it­or­ing sys­tem does not re­quire reg­u­lar ser­vice or cal­ib­ra­tion.

Sum­mary

Nivus in­stalled the new mon­it­or­ing sys­tem in March 2025, and Will says: “The per­form­ance to-date has been good – there have been no out­ages and there have been no re­quire­ments for a site vis­it. We per­formed manu­al checks on the mon­it­ors us­ing a port­able Nivu­Flow Stick and they are mon­it­or­ing very ac­cur­ately, rep­res­ent­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant im­prove­ment on their pre­de­cessors. It is also com­fort­ing to know that we have the re­dund­ancy meas­ures in place,” he adds.

Look­ing for­ward, Will says: “Giv­en the im­port­ance of the Loe Bar as an eco­lo­gic­al as­set, and of flood man­age­ment in Hel­ston, we are de­lighted with the per­form­ance of the mon­it­or­ing sys­tem, and will be ap­ply­ing for the Loe Pool and Bar to be re­cog­nised as a ‘Stra­tegic­ally Im­port­ant As­set’. 

“At the EA, we are ac­cus­tomed to man­aging re­mote sites, but Loe Bar is prob­ably one of our most chal­len­ging loc­a­tions, so it has been grat­i­fy­ing to be able to es­tab­lish a ro­bust, re­li­able, and off-grid solu­tion to meet the twin goals of en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion and flood risk re­duc­tion.”
 

AI-Based Condition Monitoring Solution

The new Alfa Lav­al Clari­ot™ mon­it­ors equip­ment and pro­cesses to provide ac­tion­able in­sights that en­hance up­time and op­tim­ize re­source ef­fi­ciency. The de­vel­op­ment is based on the ex­tens­ive ex­per­i­ence from more than 3,000 con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing units already op­er­at­ing world­wide. With new hard­ware and soft­ware Alfa Lav­al now of­fers a com­plete di­git­al hand­shake, tailored for use in de­mand­ing hy­gien­ic pro­cesses. 

Every drop counts

Un­planned down­time costs man­u­fac­tur­ers bil­lions of euro in lost rev­en­ue each year. Idle pro­cess lines cause product loss, ex­tra clean­ing, pro­duc­tion delays, wasted wa­ter and po­ten­tial dam­age to ma­chinery. 

In a world where every drop and every man-hour count, our cus­tom­ers in­creas­ingly seek solu­tions that im­prove up­time and pro­ductiv­ity, while re­du­cing re­source waste. This is where Clari­ot™ makes a dif­fer­ence, help­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers in hy­gien­ic in­dus­tries pre­vent fail­ures and run at full ca­pa­city without un­ne­ces­sary in­ter­rup­tions”, says Tor­sten Ped­er­sen, Com­mer­cial Head Con­di­tion Mon­it­or­ing at Alfa Lav­al Flu­id Hand­ling.

Clari­ot™ provides 24/7 mon­it­or­ing, alerts and dia­gnostics for pumps and oth­er ro­tat­ing equip­ment, e.g. agit­at­ors. The in­dustry-in­tel­li­gent solu­tion pro­act­ively de­tects ma­chine fail­ures be­fore they oc­cur, max­im­iz­ing per­form­ance, min­im­iz­ing down­time and ex­tend­ing equip­ment lifespan.

From in­sight to foresight

Clari­ot™ is an im­port­ant next step in the di­git­al­iz­a­tion strategy of Alfa Lav­al, where re­source and op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency align with the latest smart tech­no­lo­gies. Clari­ot is a stan­dalone sys­tem, en­abling max­im­um cy­ber­se­cur­ity, by op­er­at­ing in­de­pend­ently from in­tern­al busi­ness-crit­ic­al sys­tems, meet­ing the re­quire­ments of IEC 62443-3-3 SL1.

In­stall­a­tion is simple, and Clari­ot™ is com­pat­ible with most pump brands. The user in­ter­face is in­tu­it­ive, and the in­vest­ment is low with a short pay­back time. It is de­signed for hy­gien­ic pro­cesses, for mon­it­or­ing pumps and oth­er ro­tat­ing equip­ment, e.g. agit­at­ors. The Clari­ot VX sensor is de­signed spe­cific­ally for wet pro­duc­tion en­vir­on­ments and for hand­ling mul­tiple change-overs on the pro­cess lines. Clari­ot™ VX sensors are pre-moun­ted on a range of Alfa Lav­al pumps, and the use of Clari­ot™ po­ten­tially ex­tends the war­ranty on equip­ment if mon­itored and ser­viced ac­cord­ing to re­com­mend­a­tions.

Com­pre­hens­ive Buy­ers Guide avail­able

To as­sist de­cision-makers and buy­ers, Alfa Lav­al has de­veloped a Buy­er’s Guide to con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing in hy­gien­ic in­dus­tries with de­tailed in­form­a­tion about main­ten­ance strategies, se­lec­tion and im­ple­ment­a­tion of the right solu­tions as well as cus­tom­er be­ne­fits. The guideline is avail­able on the Alfa Lav­al web­site.
 

Ultrasonic Leak Detector

VPIn­stru­ments an­nounces the ad­di­tion of the VP Leak De­tect­or to its com­pre­hens­ive product port­fo­lio. This in­tu­it­ive ul­tra­son­ic in­spec­tion tool is de­signed to help main­ten­ance pro­fes­sion­als eas­ily de­tect com­pressed air, gas, and va­cu­um leaks and troubleshoot mech­an­ic­al sys­tems. 

A prac­tic­al tool for pre­vent­ive main­ten­ance  

The VP Leak De­tect­or is a prac­tic­al and cost-ef­fect­ive solu­tion ideal for both be­gin­ners in ul­tra­son­ic in­spec­tion and seasoned pro­fes­sion­als. With its user-friendly design and min­im­al train­ing re­quire­ments, the device em­powers tech­ni­cians to quickly identi­fy leaks. These leaks might oth­er­wise res­ult in wasted en­ergy, in­creased op­er­a­tion­al costs, or equip­ment fail­ure.

Ver­sat­ile ap­plic­a­tions

Key be­ne­fits and fea­tures of the VP Leak De­tect­or are the in­teg­rated LED Bar Graph Meter that provides a clear, visu­al feed­back dur­ing in­spec­tions and the 8-po­s­i­tion sens­it­iv­ity se­lect­or to al­low pro­fes­sion­als pre­cise ad­just­ment for ac­cur­ate leak de­tec­tion. The scan­ning mod­ule en­ables flex­ible use for vari­ous ap­plic­a­tions and the rub­ber fo­cus­ing probe en­sures pin­point ac­cur­acy when identi­fy­ing leaks. The device fea­tures a rugged ABS hand-held design and stain­less steel sensor en­clos­ures. It op­er­ates in the 36–44 kHz fre­quency range for fast re­sponse times and the weight of only 0.3 kg makes it ideal for en­ergy audits or routine fa­cil­ity in­spec­tions.

The VP Leak De­tect­or is a power­ful tool de­signed to sup­port a wide range of main­ten­ance and en­ergy man­age­ment tasks. Its pre­ci­sion and ease of use make it ideal for daily op­er­a­tions as well as long-term ef­fi­ciency strategies.

Radar Level Sensor for Level Control in Harsh Environments

On­do­Sense presents a new radar sensor for high-per­form­ance level con­trol, the apex Level Line en­ables high-pre­ci­sion and fast level meas­ure­ments in harsh in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments with ex­treme tem­per­at­ures, smoke, and dust – e.g. for mol­ten met­al level mon­it­or­ing or for through­put meas­ure­ments on con­vey­or belts. The radar level sensor con­sist­ently de­liv­ers re­li­able meas­ure­ment res­ults with an ac­cur­acy of up to 0.1 mil­li­meters, even with strongly fluc­tu­at­ing levels. This is due to a unique com­bin­a­tion of a high meas­ur­ing rate (500 Hz) and smart fil­ter al­gorithms. As a res­ult, the On­do­Sense apex Level Line en­sures er­ror-free, pre­cise meas­ure­ments at all times, even in the pres­ence of wave mo­tion, bubble form­a­tion or oth­er ab­rupt level fluc­tu­ations. 

The radar sensor has a dust-tight, jet-proof pro­tec­tion rat­ing (IP 67) and is ideal for harsh en­vir­on­ments with its dur­able PT­FE lens. For ex­treme op­er­at­ing con­di­tions, On­do­Sense of­fers an op­tion­al air-cooled heat shield for max­im­um pro­tec­tion against very high tem­per­at­ures or heavy dirt. This en­sures that the On­do­Sense apex Level Line de­liv­ers the best pos­sible meas­ure­ment res­ults in any en­vir­on­ment.

Wide range of ap­plic­a­tions 

The On­do­Sense apex Level Line 's ap­plic­a­tion spec­trum ranges from level mon­it­or­ing of mol­ten met­al in slab cast­ing, in ladles, ladle cars, laun­der sys­tems, melt­ing fur­naces and cru­cibles to through­put meas­ure­ments on con­vey­or belts and level or volume meas­ure­ments of bulk ma­ter­i­al stock­piles in min­ing.

The radar level sensor of­fers a wide se­lec­tion of in­ter­faces: The On­do­Sense apex Level Line is equipped with either an ad­vanced Profinet in­ter­face or a proven ana­log cur­rent in­ter­face (4–20 mA). Three di­git­al switch­ing out­puts (PNP/NPN) are also avail­able. The level sensor's meas­ur­ing range starts at just 0.1 meters and ex­tends to 40 meters. Thanks to pre­con­figured ap­plic­a­tion pro­files in the con­fig­ur­a­tion soft­ware, cus­tom­ers be­ne­fit from simple and fast sensor com­mis­sion­ing.
 

Measurement Probe for Improved Dry Room Control

Vais­ala launched the new DMP1 Dew Point and Tem­per­at­ure Probe to mon­it­or en­vir­on­ment­al con­di­tions in crit­ic­al man­u­fac­tur­ing rooms and spaces. With dew point meas­ure­ment cap­ab­il­ity down to -70°C, and a rap­id re­sponse, hun­dreds of times faster than oth­er com­pet­ing meas­ure­ment tech­no­lo­gies, the new com­pact DMP1 is ideal for dry rooms. 

The DMP1 probe provides pre­cise meas­ure­ments in de­mand­ing dry pro­cessing con­di­tions, such as lith­i­um-ion bat­tery pro­duc­tion, where hu­mid­ity con­trol is crit­ic­al to man­u­fac­tured bat­tery per­form­ance. Em­ploy­ing ad­vanced meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy, the DMP1 en­sures that dew point con­di­tions stay as spe­cified in all areas of a man­u­fac­tur­ing dry room and there­fore helps main­tain both product qual­ity and man­u­fac­tur­ing safety.

Im­proved vis­ib­il­ity and con­trol of the en­tire dry room

The probe can be eas­ily in­teg­rated in­to cent­ral­ized pro­duc­tion, safety, and qual­ity mon­it­or­ing sys­tems. De­signed for meas­ure­ment sta­bil­ity, with long cal­ib­ra­tion cycles, the DMP1 has a low main­ten­ance re­quire­ment and can with­stand ac­ci­dent­al hu­mid­ity spikes caused by hu­mans, ma­chines, or ex­tern­al air con­di­tions.

The DMP1 is a part of the mod­u­lar Vais­ala In­digo meas­ure­ment eco­sys­tem, of­fer­ing plug-and-play com­pat­ib­il­ity with con­nec­ted smart devices. For ex­ample, it can be con­nec­ted to an Indigo300 trans­mit­ter to dis­play data loc­ally and trans­mit meas­ure­ment val­ues to auto­ma­tion and con­trol sys­tems. The probe can also be con­nec­ted to an Indigo80 hand­held device for main­ten­ance work, and in­ter­change­able probes mean that down­time is min­im­ized and ser­vice work is sim­pli­fied. 
 

Development for Cutting-Edge Flow Measurement Solutions

As industries evolve, OEMs require high-performance, reliable, and cost-effective flow measurement technologies to integrate seamlessly into their systems. Titan Enterprises specialises in developing customised flow meters and instrumentation that meet rigorous industry standards while offering superior accuracy and longevity. OEM solutions range from modifications to existing proven technology, even as simply as adjusting cable length, colour and fittings, to a long-term full design project involving a detailed design specification, development and prototyping.

“Our customers face unique challenges, from extreme environmental conditions to demanding regulatory requirements,” says Neil Hannay, Senior R&D Engineer at Titan Enterprises. “We collaborate closely with OEMs to design, test, and manufacture flow measurement solutions that enhance system efficiency, reliability, and overall performance.”

While precision engineered flowmeters may represent a higher upfront cost, the investment is small compared to the critical processes and equipment they help to safeguard. Process Managers are encouraged to invest in trusted measurement solutions that consistently provide long-term accuracy, stability, and reliability.

An initially appealing equipment choice can sometimes lead to suboptimal outcomes in terms of performance, system compatibility, reliability, or operational lifespan. Such issues can negatively affect end-user satisfaction and damage a company’s reputation. As a result, several OEMs have turned to Titan Enterprises for more robust and reliable alternative solutions. Titan Enterprises provides a comprehensive range of flow meters, including ultrasonic, turbine, and positive displacement meters, that cater to diverse sectors such as medical, food and beverage, and chemical processing. Through extensive research and development, Titan continues to push the boundaries of innovation, ensuring that OEMs benefit from cutting-edge technology that meets their exact specifications.

  • Medical - A pioneering U.S. medical device manufacturer required a highly accurate, compact flow meter for a new generation of infusion pumps. They sought out Titan Enterprises who developed a tailored solution that not only met stringent performance requirements but also improved product lifecycle and compliance with healthcare regulations.
  • Pharmaceutical – A global pharma/biotechnology supplier faced recurring failures with flowmeters in their integrated systems and was unable to obtain support from the original manufacturer. Having successfully used Titan’s flowmeters for pure water dispensing in another division, the company turned to Titan for a dependable solution. Titan met the precise technical requirements and delivered accurate and reliable flowmeters that were seamlessly integrated into the batch dispensing equipment, leading the OEM to adopt Titan’s meters as the new standard.
  • Beverage – A leading industrial design consultancy were finding that the flow sensors they had initially installed into their pioneering drink dispense unit were failing dramatically, presenting them with a potential major problem on their hands. With no support from their original international supplier and the launch of their micro-dosing system just weeks away, having a proven, reliable and well-designed flowmeter was vital. Turning to the industry, the company sought advice and were directed to Titan. With a few modifications made to Titan’s beverage flow meter that supported their customers’ needs, over 12,000 of Titan’s sensors were installed.
     

“Providing ongoing support for our OEM’s is key,” continues Neil. “Offering expert guidance and understanding of the issues the customer is aiming to resolve goes a long way to ensuring long-term customer relations, system reliability, and optimal product performance. And as OEM products develop, we can modify our flowmeters to move along with them.”
 

Saving Space and Reducing Variants - Efficient Design of Conveyor Systems for Food Packaging

NORD has ex­tens­ive know­ledge and long-term ex­per­i­ence in more than 100 in­dus­tries. As a sys­tem sup­pli­er with glob­al pres­ence, the com­pany of­fers tail­or-made and sus­tain­able drive solu­tions for all stages in the pack­aging pro­cess. Fre­driksons, a man­u­fac­turer of con­vey­or sys­tems for the food and bever­age in­dustry, be­ne­fits not only from the space-sav­ing design, the dif­fer­ent speed levels and the in­teg­rated multi-pro­tocol Eth­er­net in­ter­face of the NORD drives, but also from the op­tion for vari­ant re­duc­tion – both for de­cent­ral­ised and con­trol cab­in­et solu­tions. The abil­ity of NORD drives to with­stand tem­per­at­ures down to -30 °C makes them par­tic­u­larly ad­vant­age­ous for deep-freeze ap­plic­a­tions.

High-tech in­vert­ers for mod­ern pro­duc­tion

Fre­driksons’ chain con­vey­ors for food pack­aging use IE3 asyn­chron­ous mo­tors from NORD with a NORD­B­LOC.1® hel­ic­al bevel gear unit com­bined with the NOR­DAC ON fre­quency in­vert­er. The de­cent­ral­ised fre­quency in­vert­ers provide an eco­nom­ic­al solu­tion for mod­ern pro­duc­tion en­vir­on­ments. They cov­er a power range from 0.37 kW to 3.7 kW and are char­ac­ter­ised by their full plug-in cap­ab­il­ity, plug-and-play func­tion, low main­ten­ance and high re­li­ab­il­ity. Fur­ther fea­tures are PLC on board and the in­teg­rated Eth­er­net in­ter­face. The PROFINET, Eth­er­Net/IP and Eth­er­CAT pro­to­cols can be eas­ily set via para­met­ers. In ad­di­tion to STO and SS1, the NOR­DAC ON will soon of­fer new func­tion­al safety fea­tures: SLS, SMS and SSM.

For stand-alone solu­tions, Fre­driksons uses the NOR­DAC PRO SK 500P fre­quency in­vert­er from NORD. The con­trol cab­in­et in­vert­er in book-size format is suit­able for prac­tic­ally any drive ap­plic­a­tion. Its vari­ants cov­er a power range from 0.25 to 22 kW while also con­vin­cing with its high over­load cap­ab­il­ity. Soon, the in­vert­er will be avail­able with a power ex­ten­sion up to and in­clud­ing 160 kW.

By us­ing NORD products, the Swedish ma­chine man­u­fac­turer was able to re­duce the num­ber of drive vari­ants in its sys­tems. Thanks to the re­duced use of ma­ter­i­als and the ideally matched drive com­pon­ents, the TCO and the CO2 foot­print can also be re­duced.
 

AC Integrated Brushless Servo Motors

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.
 

Streamlined Plug-and-Play Platform for Motor and Drive

ABB’s new LV Titanium Variable Speed Motor platform delivers the benefits of a high-efficiency motor and variable speed drive (VSD) technology in a single, compact, customizable, plug-and-play solution that enables industrial customers to minimize their energy consumption, save money and reduce carbon emissions. 

Efficiency upgrade 

The LV Titanium offers a simple and cost-effective way to provide IE5 Ultra-Premium efficiency for pumps, compressors and many other applications. As a drop-in replacement for existing direct-online (DOL) induction motors, the Variable Speed Motor provides an easy upgrade path to a VSD-driven motor with a fast ROI.

The innovative platform is more than a drive simply bolted on to a motor. Instead, it is engineered as a fully integrated concept, with an advanced drive module purpose-designed from the outset for optimal performance with a high efficiency permanent magnet (PM) motor. This sleek, streamlined design, with the axial drive mounted on the end of the motor, saves space and makes the LV Titanium ideal for applications like vertical pumps. It is also remarkably quiet in operation.

Ease of Installation

A further advantage of the LV Titanium is that it can operate over a wide range of speed and torque requirements, with the capability to deliver high torque at low speeds.

Plug-and-play functionality means the LV Titanium needs no commissioning, as the fully integrated motor and drive are commissioned and optimized to work together before leaving the factory. This makes installation fast and easy, with no need for cabinets or electrical rooms, and specially trained personnel are not required. The LV Titanium has an intuitive control panel with customer friendly analog and digital inputs and outputs (I/O) together with a simple built-in PLC, while its connectivity features include the Modbus RTU communications protocol for easy integration with PLCs and other control devices.

Reducing space, costs and emissions

Thanks to its compact design and high power density, the Variable Speed Motor is at least two frame sizes smaller than comparable induction motors, making it suitable for installations where space is at a premium, such as in replacing older, inefficient motors. 

The possibilities for energy cost savings by switching to the LV Titanium are illustrated by comparing it with a conventional, standalone, fixed speed motor in a 7.5 kW centrifugal pumping application - one of the main sweet spots for the IE5 Variable Speed Motor. The annual savings on the electricity bill are estimated at well over Euro 4,000 based on a typical energy cost for Europe of Euro 0.21/kWh. At the same time, there is an yearly reduction of 6,000 kg in CO2 emissions based on the average European carbon intensity factor of 0.3 kg CO2/kWh (source - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity).

The LV Titanium Variable Speed Motor is currently available in smaller sizes from 1.5 kW while the platform will expand to cover applications up to 30 kW for a wide range of industrial sectors – from water treatment and chemical processing to food and beverage. In addition to being available off the shelf, the motor can be customized to suit specific customer requirements.

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