HERMA GmbH is significantly reducing the energy requirements of its new adhesive coating plant with a combined heat, power and cooling system and other measures.
Produce your own electricity, cooling and heating and so much Save energy, as normally used by around 150 single-family homes: When the self-adhesive specialist HERMA is opening its new coating plant for adhesive materials in Filderstadt next autumn, the company is also opening a new chapter in terms of energy. This is good news for the environment, but also has a strong economic reason.
„In five to ten years at the latest, the issue of energy costs will take on a completely different relevance than it does today.“,
HERMA Managing Director Dr Thomas Baumgärtner
He is certain:
„If you are able to utilise energy very efficiently, this will sooner or later be a significant competitive advantage.“
HERMA Managing Director Dr Thomas Baumgärtner
For this reason, HERMA had already taken this into account during the initial planning for the new plant. Energy experts EGS-plan from Stuttgart was brought on board. The engineers from the planning office, which has already received numerous prizes and awards for its sustainability-orientated concepts, were given a free hand, so to speak. „That's not a matter of course,“ reports Uwe Hemminger, who has already supervised many projects as head of the energy concept department at EGS-plan.
„When a manufacturing company builds another production facility, it usually adopts the energy concept of the existing production facility. After all, this has proven its worth; the focus is usually on the actual production processes. When it comes to energy supply, it is better not to take any risks. However, HERMA was open to exploring new avenues - as long as they paid off.“
EGS-plan Head of Energy Concept Department , Uwe Hemminger
Air-conditioned by activated concrete cores
The centrepiece of the HERMA concept is its own combined heat and power plant with a so-called Combined heat, power and cooling: As a quasi by-product of electricity generation, heat is generated there, which in turn is used in Absorption chillers is used to cool machines and production rooms.
„The amount of heat and cold we generate is even sufficient to heat and cool the new building of the HERMA labelling machines division, which we commissioned on the same site in January.“,
HERMA Managing Director Dr Thomas Baumgärtner
The principle of Concrete core activation utilised: Plastic pipes were embedded in the solid concrete ceilings of the labelling machine building, through which hot or cold water flows depending on the season.
„This allows the room temperature to be regulated in a very energy-saving and environmentally friendly way“
HERMA Managing Director Dr Thomas Baumgärtner
Thanks to a special layered ventilation system, significantly less supply air needs to be heated or cooled in the new adhesive materials plant; the saving amounts to around 50,000 cubic metres of air per hour. „And conditioning air in particular is a very energy-intensive process,“ says Uwe Hemminger from EGS-plan.
The steam required to moisten the paper webs is no longer generated at a single central location - as in the existing plant - but in a decentralised manner close to the production facilities and therefore more in line with demand and with fewer energy losses due to transport routes.
Considerable savings
With these and other measures, a total of considerable savings realise. Compared to the energy concept in the coating plant that HERMA commissioned in 2008, the company now saves an amount of electricity that is roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of 200 single-family homes; in terms of heat, the savings are equivalent to the annual consumption of around 100 single-family homes.
„We are very much looking forward to soon operating a coating plant that will not only be at the forefront of production and material flow technology, but also in terms of energy efficiency.“,
HERMA Managing Director Dr Thomas Baumgärtner
The scheduled commissioning is planned for next autumn; the investment sum for the new coating plant amounts to a good 80 million euros.
Source: HERMA GmbH
