Energetic redesign in electronics production

In building and factory automation, the collected process and energy data is of great importance. After all, companies that want to make savings here need to know exactly what the current state of affairs is. Where exactly is too much energy being consumed on the factory floor because machines are unnecessarily running in standby mode? Where are the lights on even after the end of the shift? And why is the quality of the molded parts suddenly deteriorating? Dr. Till Potente is one employee who would like to find out exactly where electricity, heat and cold are concerned. The electrical engineering graduate, Head of Operations and Sustainability at Phoenix Contact Electronics, is working with the facility management team at the company's Bad Pyrmont site to identify potential improvements. He is focusing on measures that will lead to more efficient processes and thus further optimize the site's sustainability. If electricity, heating and cooling are seen as a triad, it is immediately clear why efficiency can best be increased in combination. Ultimately, even the energy that remains at the end of a process and is normally lost should be used. The approach quickly becomes tangible on the basis of heat losses.

Generating energy from waste heat

Production processes always generate heat due to efficiency losses in the technology used. In addition, there are classic thermal manufacturing processes that also release heat into their environment. This happens, for example, when components cool down again after the energy-intensive injection molding or soldering process. Till Potente wants to transfer this energy in a targeted manner to rooms and processes that require heat. "We harvest energy," says the plant manager, summarizing his activities.

Particularly in view of the war in Ukraine and the associated gas shortage, it is becoming increasingly worthwhile to accumulate even small amounts of heat. "Phoenix Contact is irreversibly riding the green wave," says Till Potente, as the company has been pursuing the goal of sustainable trade for years in order to protect the climate and the environment. The green wave is proving to be powerful due to the changed view of dependence on fossil fuels with correspondingly high prices and the limitation of global warming. As a result, solar energy is becoming increasingly economical compared to fossil fuels and the motivation to recover energy is growing. It therefore pays to keep the energy generated in the system for as long as possible. However, large-scale solutions, such as central heat recovery systems, are no longer suitable for harvesting. "We need numerous small systems directly on the production lines," says Potente. However, this new small-scale approach requires more networking and integration of production units. "Manufacturing companies are dealing with interrelationships that cannot be mastered without digitalization."

Quick to install and easy to put into operation

Dr. Till Potente sets out to harvest energy in production at Phoenix Contact. © Phoenix Contact

If you want to work more efficiently, you should critically analyze the established production processes and the system layout used for them. The timing for a comprehensive reorganization is good in one of the product areas at the Bad Pyrmont site, as some relocations are due to take place there. "We are using this opportunity to carry out an energy-efficient redesign when converting the plant without incurring any significant additional costs," reports Potente. In this case too, the basis for the process changes is a database that creates a high level of transparency with regard to the individual processes, energy flows and mutual interactions. A retrofittable solution for recording energy data is used for this purpose.

In all activities, it is important to extract profitable information from the collected data. Among other things, this shows the interactions within interlinked sub-processes with mutual dependencies. At the Digital Factory in Bad Pyrmont, Till Potente and his team use the self-developed Data Collection Box to collect data. It can record data from any sensor system and various bus systems at field level and make it accessible to other systems. At the heart of the box is a PLCnext controller, which can be used to collect data in real time and process complex computing operations on a single device. The Axioline bus system is used to connect the sensors, allowing individual bus configurations that are then automatically put into operation. This in turn contributes to a high degree of flexibility with regard to future expansions in data acquisition.

The solution works so well that Phoenix Contact now sells it in various functional versions for measurement data acquisition. Users thus receive an individual plug-and-play system that is characterized by low installation effort and can be easily integrated into existing systems. During subsequent commissioning, only the relevant settings need to be made, unless these have already been carried out using available pre-configurations.

Evaluating the energy efficiency of older machines

With the Data Collection Box, Phoenix Contact has developed a solution that can be easily retrofitted for measurement data acquisition. © Phoenix Contact

In the Pyrmont project, the collection of energy data is minimally invasive in the area of the energy supply of machines or manual workstations. "The Data Collection Box is simply plugged in between the power supply and the application," explains Daniel Fiedler, Test Engineering Manager at the Bad Pyrmont site. This approach means that no new certification - for example with regard to CE marking - is required. The retrofittable data acquisition solution opens up the opportunity to evaluate older machines in particular from the perspective of energy efficiency. In electronics production, for example, an older soldering system was equipped with the box in order to determine energy flows over time. The data obtained is also suitable as a basis for investment decisions. They can also be used as a decision-making aid for effective load management.

The activities at the Bad Pyrmont site will be trend-setting for the entire Phoenix Contact Group, particularly when it comes to heat. Burning natural gas is not an option on the way to greater climate protection. This statement is confirmed by the fact that, according to Frank Schröder, Head of Facility Management at the site, the gas-powered combined heat and power plants in Bad Pyrmont will gradually be taken off the grid. "The plants will then be given the status of an emergency reserve and support us as redundancy in switching completely to our own climate-neutral energy supply," says Schröder. He is thinking primarily of electricity from photovoltaic systems and participation in local wind farms. "Despite all the ambitious measures for more sustainability in production, the premise of economic activity still applies," notes Till Potente. How this premise can be implemented in the face of climate protection, limited energy resources and a shortage of raw materials remains an exciting question.

Thorsten Sienk

Hanover Fair, Hall 9, Stand F40