News
Climate adaptation in urban areas: Water as a central building block
Climate change poses a huge challenge for municipalities. Flooding due to heavy precipitation is becoming more frequent, while at the same time there is a threat of prolonged periods of heat and drought. Water plays a central role in the necessary adaptation to climate change, especially in urban areas. The creation of a natural water balance is just as much a focus as intelligent water management with a blue-green infrastructure. The storage of water on multifunctional surfaces, in infiltration systems and with green roofs and facades not only protects against flooding during heavy precipitation, but also secures the water supply for parks, street trees and inner-city green spaces during dry periods.
Evaporative cooling contributes significantly to mitigating heat stress. “Water and urban greenery are central building blocks of climate adaptation, for a healthy and livable urban landscape, and for the preservation and enhancement of biodiversity,” emphasized Prof. Uli Paetzel, President of the DWA German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste, on the occasion of the presentation of the DWA position Water-conscious development of our cities.
Designing the cities of the future in a water-conscious way means a secure supply of high-quality and sufficient water, intensified greening as a heat and climate precaution and a management of precipitation water oriented to the natural water balance with blue-green infrastructure and multifunctional land use. The water-conscious city of the future cleverly combines the interests of water management, urban development, road and open space planning and climate protection in terms of function and design. Ecologically enhanced water bodies, banks and floodplains are part of an attractive urban landscape.
“Appropriate urban redevelopment measures are technically feasible, economically and ecologically beneficial, and legally possible.”
– Prof. Mathias Uhl, Chairman of the DWA Coordination Group “Water Aware City of the Future”
This has been demonstrated in numerous pilot projects throughout Germany. However, realization on a large scale often fails due to a lack of cooperation between potential project partners, legal uncertainties and fuzzy definitions of financial responsibilities.
One focus of the water-conscious city of the future is the natural water balance. Groundwater recharge and evaporation must be strengthened, and runoff from the city must be limited to levels typical of the landscape. Land-saving forms of development, water-permeable surfaces, infiltration systems, street and building greenery, cisterns, and retention ditches and basins are proven stormwater management measures and must be given greater consideration. Heavy rains and flood events require clearly identifiable emergency runoff paths in the terrain. In the future, green spaces, squares and sports facilities should be usable in a multifunctional manner, including for the short-term retention of stormwater runoff.
Small-scale and usable public water areas in parks and in streets or even small flowing bodies of water, wetlands simultaneously bring quality of stay, coolness and biodiversity to the cities. Rainwater and also hygienically safe wastewater treated for specific uses can be used as water resources for irrigation. Green roofs or facades, tree plantings, or water storage in open retention areas can reduce particulate matter and increase cooling through evaporation. Alternative water resources can be used to irrigate healthy vegetation with high evapotranspiration.
The appropriate measures are already possible on the basis of current law. The wastewater laws of the Federal Water Act and the state water laws give priority to decentralized precipitation water management. Most of the federal states have standardized concrete requirements for the permissibility or exemption from permission of precipitation water infiltration and authorized the municipalities to order decentralized precipitation water disposal. The German Building Code opens up far-reaching possibilities for planning urban green corridors, also for the purpose of water-conscious urban development, and for establishing the necessary green spaces and plantings in a binding manner with regard to new development, also as compensation for impact under nature conservation law. Urban development contracts offer extensive possibilities for regulating water-conscious design in large-scale projects.
Although the existing law already opens up many possibilities, it must be further optimized in the sense of a water-conscious city of the future. Among other things, a clear legal mandate for the development of decentralized precipitation management should be standardized in the Water Resources Act. In addition, the federal states should create water law options for (co-)financing heavy rainfall risk management. This possibility is not yet sufficiently provided for in the state water laws. In addition, sufficient financial resources must be made available both for the planning and construction of the corresponding blue-green infrastructure and for its long-term operation.
News
Pump innovations at Nordbau 2021
After the Covid break, many suppliers are returning to the stage now that trade shows can finally take place again. Consistently present in Neumünster: Tsurumi from Düsseldorf. As a novelty, the pump market leader presents the HS3.75SL, henceforth the most powerful model of the series.
The HS is for everyone and everything, they said. Tsurumi is positioning it as a universal helper for dirty water. It meets a highly competitive field not only in the construction industry, but also in the trades, industry and municipalities. However, it is competing there with the best prerequisites. The company therefore encourages product comparisons.
Particularly noteworthy is the performance of the small submersible pump: Compared to the previously strongest model of the series, the flow rate has practically doubled, to 580 l/min now. The HS3.75SL can maintain this value at a constant level. Components are responsible for this. For example, the efficient oil distributor, which reliably lubricates the unit in any position. The double internal mechanical seal made of ultra-hard silicon carbide also contributes to the long service life. Electrical damage caused by creeping moisture is rare anyway: The supplier hermetically encapsulates each conductor in potting compound.
The pump is considered safe to run dry and does not require supervision. Users can carry out maintenance themselves if they wish – Tsurumi’s simple modular design is a real system advantage.
By the way, the dimensions have not changed. However, the manufacturer has had to adjust the elbow at the outlet to handle the flow rate. Many other values also remained the same, such as the motor power (0.75 kW). As before, the pumped medium is discharged to the side in a spiral, which is good for sand water and mud. The scales indicate a dry weight of only 19.6 kg, despite the robust housing made of spheroidal cast iron GGG70. The overall unit height is only 45 cm, and the housing diameter is a slim 18 cm. In this respect, almost everything is the same, but much more powerful: Who wouldn’t like that?
At its booth in the outdoor area West-W210, the company will also be showing other universal pumps and providing information on the special design features of the Japanese pumps with interesting technical models.
News
World Refrigeration Day 2021 sponsored by Refrigeration Solutions
Sustainable cooling solutions for the benefit of future generations
Proper cooling has a great importance for sensitive goods in various application areas. High-quality cooling solutions can therefore create safe and sustainable environments. Viessmann Refrigeration Solutions is supporting World Refrigeration Day for the third year in a row. This time, the event will take place on June 26 and aims to raise awareness of the importance of refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps.
Why is refrigeration important?
The global Covid 19 pandemic has shown us how important a safe environment is for people as well as the planet. Refrigeration plays a key role in many ways: whether it’s storing life-saving vaccines or blood transfusions at the right temperature, or maintaining the cold chain in food retail and foodservice to ensure food safety and ultimately reduce food waste. With the sponsorship, the company, as one of the leading manufacturers of refrigeration solutions in Europe, aims to share and contribute its knowledge and experience in this field.
“Our goal is to create a safe environment for sensitive goods and operations. We focus on future-proofing solutions and delivering lifecycle support to redefine our customers’ business and their environmental impact.”
– Frank Winters, CEO of Viessmann Refrigeration Solutions
Focus on the people behind the ‘cool careers’ This year’s World Refrigeration Day looks at careers in the industry and is themed “Cooling Champions: cool careers for a better world.” The aim of the campaign is to inspire students and young professionals in all countries, both women and men, to meet society’s challenges by pursuing careers in this important sector. The Group is participating in the campaign to advocate the importance of refrigeration specialists to the well-being of society.
The company offers young professionals career opportunities in a business that is strongly driven by the goal of creating living spaces for generations to come. The digital event is designed to provide insights into the refrigeration industry and the exciting job opportunities that this sector offers.
Chemicals News Pharmaceuticals
Digitalization: Transformation in the process industry
Siemens will be demonstrating how the combination of the real and the digital worlds empowers industrial companies to act in a versatile and sustainable manner at the “Achema Pulse” live digital event. Companies in the process industry are facing urgent and rapidly changing challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic in particular has transformed demand patterns and global supply chains virtually overnight. At the same time, industry-specific regulations and standards are creating new framework conditions for production. Digitalization and automation are the levers for mastering these changes. Industrial IoT solutions can exploit the resulting data to secure a competitive advantage since the intelligent analysis, understanding and utilization of the data allows companies to adapt their processes faster to changing requirements. The Digital Enterprise portfolio makes this possible by combining the real world with the digital world, thus enabling solutions for simulation, virtual processes, remote access and connectivity as well as presenting service offerings for digital transformation. Thanks to the corresponding industry-specific know-how, individual sector requirements can be taken into account.
Focus on industry-specific solutions
“Achema Pulse is a great opportunity to providing impulses to our custumers and gaining insights on how we can implement the digital transformation together. There will be a special emphasis on the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and we look forward to sharing our expertise in these areas.”
– Eckard Eberle, CEO of Siemens Process Automation
For companies in the pharmaceutical industry, winning the race against time is now more important than ever. The company is helping pharmaceutical companies accelerate their production setups with the help of digitalization and automation. One example is the Mainz-based biotechnology company BioNTech SE which has converted an existing facility in Marburg for the production of the Covid-19 vaccine in record time with assistance from the concern. Through collaboration and the team of experts on site in Marburg, the project timeline for converting the existing facility for the production of mRNA-vaccine was cut from around one year down to five months, whereby the implementation of key parts of the new Manufacturing Execution System (MES) was reduced to two and half months.
In the future, the digital twin can be increasingly used in vaccine development. Global healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is collaborating with digitalization expert and digital transformation leader Atos to digitalize its vaccine development and production process using the digital twin. As the first application for testing, GSK, Siemens and Atos have developed a proof-of-concept digital twin specifically for the development and manufacturing of adjuvant technologies. Using mechanical models and artificial intelligence (AI), the partners developed a hybrid model to simulate and monitor the process. As such, the digital twin links the process parameters to the quality of the adjuvant, with the sensors and process analytical technology (PAT) feeding the twin with the information needed to predict the quality of the product. Any deviation from the optimal quality is anticipated and causes the twin to act on the process parameters and rectify them to satisfy the target specifications. In the next step, GSK wants to work with the company to support its vision to establish and introduce new digital twins for the entire vaccine development process for new vaccines. Thus, the digital twins of product, production and performance will be linked together.
In the chemical industry, the biggest challenges lie in the fact that plants must run reliably and safely. The “Digital Worker” is a concept that allows operating personnel to digitize and automate work in the field using state-of-the-art technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). This approach supports the user in the digitization of workflows in process plants and in paperless processing, promoting remote access thanks to electronic documentation, access information and guidance by intelligent devices. Against this backdrop, specialty chemicals company Lanxess continues to drive forward digitalization in its production plants. Over the next three years, the specialty chemicals company will introduce mobile operations and maintenance. In a first step, around 400,000 paper-based operations and maintenance checklists used every year will be replaced by digital equivalents, then filled out on tablets. Lanxess is supported by Siemens to digitize its checklists. For this, the Moby.Check software will be used, which runs on tablets and can be controlled using either the keyboard or voice commands. Moby.Check has a flexible operating concept allowing users to create production, servicing and maintenance checklists on their PC – without any programming work or training in advance. In addition to more efficient processing, the error rate of manual transmission can be reduced, and documentation simplified. The Digital Worker supports the transformation from analog to digital workflows and can also exploit the potential of the digital twin in the field. Applications based on AI contribute to higher plant availability through the early detection of anomalies. And predictive maintenance planning means that outages and routine maintenance work are avoided.
As a specific offering for the chemical and oil & gas industries, Siemens offers not only the explosion-proof motors of the Simotics XP series, but also motors of the Simotics SD series for environments without explosion hazard in the Chemstar version. They are equipped with pre-configured chemical-specific options. Both motor series, available with options, operate reliably and energy-efficiently even under extreme conditions and offer all relevant certificates.
Modularization as the key to meeting new requirements with ease
To meet the demands of short innovation cycles and adaptations to new product portfolios, systems must be quick and easy to expand. The prerequisite for this are standardized, cross-vendor interfaces for the efficient configuration, communication and integration of modular plants. An interface of this type is defined in the MTP (Module Type Package). This protocol defines the information technology aspect of process models or plant sections in such a way that they can easily be integrated into a comprehensive automation solution, for example the Simatic PCS neo web-based process control system. The modules are assembled to form an overall process, facilitating their monitoring and control. At Achema Pulse, the example of the cooperation between Siemens and Merck will demonstrate how a modular production plant based on MTP minimizes engineering effort and permits fast and versatile process adaptations.
New IIoT solutions for faster data transmission and reliable data acquisition
“As part of the digital transformation, new trends are emerging in the process industry, which we are driving with our solutions and innovations,” explains Eberle. “We regard 5G as one of the most important technologies in the industrial IoT context. It means we can transfer data quickly and reliably over powerful communication networks to exactly where it is needed. This makes production plants more flexible, autonomous and efficient.” Scalance MUM856-1 is the first industrial 5G router from Siemens.
With its wireless connectivity, the robust Sitrans MS200 Multisensor forms the hardware basis for the collection of vibration and temperature data in mechanical system components. Via a Bluetooth connection, the data is sent to the Sitrans CC220 industrial gateway where it is encrypted before being transmitted from there to the cloud. Sitrans SCM IQ has an anomaly detection feature which is based on machine learning. It constantly monitors and analyzes all sensor values and swiftly detects any deviations from the intended operating state. Via the app, anomalies in plant behavior can be documented for immediate distribution to alert a predefined group of users. The Sitrans SCM IQ system comprises multisensors, gateway and app, and can be used in all industrial plants with mechanical or rotating system components. Scheduled to be available from summer 2021, it allows previously unused data from field devices to be used for the preemptive identification and prevention of imminent device failures in advance, thus reducing maintenance costs and avoiding unplanned downtimes.
Sustainability as a guiding principle
As Eberle emphasizes: “Our offer not only meets the requirements of our customers, it also constitutes a contribution to sustainability.” Accordingly, Achema Pulse will also be offering sessions on the topics of chemical recycling and sustainability.