The Manchester site in New Hampshire is reducing energy consumption when reheating seals without having to spend money on new equipment.
When Freudenberg Sealing Technologies’ sustainability initiative focused on reheating ovens, the Manchester site also had a sum of money available to purchase modern equipment. “We simply said: we don’t need the money,” reports Alena Lidster, the site’s Sustainability Manager at the time. The reason: even without new ovens, the site has managed to reduce its energy consumption and thus the CO2 emissions from reheating: “CO2reduction without investments” is the title of this sustainability project.
“It’s worth questioning things, then you can almost always identify opportunities for improvement,” says Lidster, describing her philosophy and approach. Reheating ovens were not previously the focus of the site’s various sustainability efforts. The basis for the double savings success – in terms of emissions and investments – was now laid by a meticulous analysis of the current situation: heating capacities on the one hand and actual requirements on the other.
The precise evaluation of the operating data of all the reheating furnaces distributed across the site revealed that they were not being used to capacity at all times. “We identified inefficiencies and overcapacities,” says Lidster, summing up the key findings of the project.
It was therefore more sustainable to organize the current reheating process more efficiently, possibly even shutting down furnaces, instead of investing a six-figure sum in new furnaces. Sustainability meets cost-effectiveness. Not to mention the energy consumption and the CO2footprint that would have resulted from building new ovens.
On closer inspection, for example, it turned out that a so-called rotary oven had been in operation for long periods without being used continuously. It has now been decommissioned. The affected products are now being reheated in more efficient ovens.
Another oven did not automatically reduce its temperature to normal after a completed heating cycle, but maintained the high temperature level – which led to unnecessary energy costs and CO2emissions. “Our automation engineer has developed a program with which we can curb this energy guzzler and which can also be used by other sites if necessary,” reports Lidster. In the medium term, this outdated model is also to be decommissioned.
