Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST) has launched a strategic, 10-year initiative designed to substitute climate-friendly solutions for fossil fuels as energy sources. One way to do this is to avoid squandering waste heat from production and stop allowing it to dissipate unused in cooling towers. Instead, the waste heat is used to heat buildings and manufacturing processes.
The presentation that Hans Kloos, Lean/GROWTTH & Sustainability, calls up on his laptop is nearly a decade-and-a-half years old. The page header still makes reference to the former company name Freudenberg Dichtungs- und Schwingungstechnik. But the presentation is anything but old and outdated. It is cutting-edge.
The page after the cover sheet and table of contents lists the following activities for “Efficient Energy Use”: The use of waste heat from production machinery to heat buildings; The use of waste heat from chillers in ventilation and building heating systems; Ventilation systems with heat recapture; Waste heat use from a variable speed air compressor for office heating. At the time, FST had already implemented all these systems at its facility in Öhringen, Germany. Since then, the plant has not had to burn fossil fuels for heating.
Photovoltaics and Batteries
FST is now pursuing exactly the same goal with its “Fossil Fuel Elimination Plan,” and it is doing it systematically. That means it can build on its long experience as it carries out its decade-long plan to end its use of fossil fuels worldwide. FST can also add more elements, such as photovoltaic systems, to its tried-and-true approaches. They were implemented along with waste heat recapture in the redesign of FST facilities in Emmerich, Germany, and Chennai, India. If production comes to a stop in Emmerich on a winter weekend, an electric heat pump goes into action.
Stationary batteries are yet another way to improve energy efficiency: At the FST facility in Berlin, Germany, this approach to energy storage, called a microgrid, is already in use. For the upcoming new construction project in Morinda, India, FST is exploring the use of a large battery fed by photovoltaic cells. In the event of electrical blackouts, the battery could temporarily supply the entire plant with energy until emergency power generators kick in. That would help the plant avoid the loss of time and materials, not to mention the extra cost of machine cleaning after unplanned stoppages.
Kloos and Karl Ludwig Stein, also from Lean/GROWTTH & Sustainability, are both aware that investments in sustainability are not amortized overnight. Kloos stressed the long-term implications of the current decisions. “The protection of the climate requires that we act sustainably, that is, stop burning fossil fuels as completely and quickly as possible. We consider the impact of each of our investment decisions on our CO2 footprint. In building technology, our investment decisions will follow us for the next 40 years. What we decide today will last more than an entire generation,” he said. Both Kloos and Stein are looking at the “Fossil Fuel Elimination Plan” and the numerous efforts on behalf of energy efficiency and CO2-neutrality at FST all the more positively. “It’s all going in the right direction,” Stein said.
Renewable Wood instead of Fossil Gas
On the question of CO2-neutrality: The fossil fuels currently used at FST’s facilities are primarily needed for heating. “Up to 85 to 90 percent of the heat energy produced with fossil fuels flows into the heating systems in manufacturing and administration buildings,” Kloos said. The majority of the company’s hydraulic presses are already powered electrically. At its Oberwihl facility, FST has just replaced its last oil-fueled building heating system worldwide – except for emergency power generators – with an environmentally friendly woodchip heating system.
Stein is looking ahead. “Natural gas heating systems are next on the agenda.” Hamburg, Germany, is the first facility whose energy systems are being brought into line with the resources of the “Fossil Fuel Elimination Plan.” A series of large vulcanization presses, for example, have been operating in Hamburg using process vapor generated with natural gas. The same is true of the absorption facility that the facility uses to recapture solvents. Even the heat for the building’s climate-control system still comes from natural gas. “Various heating tasks are involved in different fields of application, with different requirement profiles and temperature levels. So it could absolutely make sense for the energy to come from various energy sources here,” Kloos said.
The details are now being examined. The spectrum of potential energy sources and types of generation for a facility-specific solution range from biogas to heat pumps. One way or another, the preference is for heating systems that are as small as possible – and thus cost the least – and that can be operated at low temperatures, and accordingly consume little energy. Among other things, this requires efficient building insulation, which can only be installed at all locations in close cooperation with Freudenberg Real Estate.
