Renewal of heating circulation pumps for a smaller CO2 footprint

With 18 exhi­bi­tion halls and a total exhi­bi­tion area of 200,000 square meters and more than 400,000 square meters of open space, Messe München in Munich’s Osten­mit is one of the big play­ers in the Ger­man and Euro­pean trade fair busi­ness. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate pro­tec­tion, Messe München is con­stant­ly set­ting new stan­dards. In its search for ener­gy-sav­ing poten­tial, the com­pa­ny opti­mized its heat­ing sys­tem over the past two years. A total of 70 out­dat­ed heat­ing cir­cu­lat­ing pumps at the trade fair cen­ter were renewed in two sub-projects. Both projects were car­ried out in coop­er­a­tion with pesCon­tract­ing GmbH, which has suc­cess­ful­ly spe­cial­ized in pump replace­ment with­out invest­ment for many years.

For Messe Frank­furt, entre­pre­neur­ial suc­cess and respon­si­ble action go hand in hand. Rec­og­niz­ing this, TÜV SÜD award­ed the trade fair cen­ter the “Ener­gy Effi­cient Com­pa­ny” cer­tifi­cate, the first to do so. Con­stant self-mon­i­tor­ing is there­fore the order of the day. An impor­tant cor­ner­stone is the exhi­bi­tion cen­ter’s com­pre­hen­sive heat­ing sys­tem. This is pre­cise­ly where Man­fred Eich­er, respon­si­ble for build­ing automa­tion at Messe München, saw a need for action in 2020: “Our heat­ing cir­cu­la­tion pumps were already 20 years old at that point. Mak­ing our­selves more ener­gy effi­cient on this side was there­fore long over­due.” The deci­sion to work with pesCon­tract­ing was made quick­ly. After all, the trade fair had already worked suc­cess­ful­ly with the pump spe­cial­ist in the past.

Just-in-time pump replacement

“We were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­vinced by the con­cept that the CO2 sav­ings were quan­ti­fied on the basis of real pump data. As a TÜV-cer­ti­fied com­pa­ny, we have high require­ments in this regard — the com­pa­ny met these right from the start. We need­ed about six months for both projects to be imple­ment­ed dur­ing ongo­ing operation.”

- Chris­t­ian Bindl, Sales Representative

Identifying and solving problems

Every major project has its pit­falls and obsta­cles. This was also the case here. Since the old pumps oper­at­ed on a 400-volt basis, but the new pumps require a volt­age of 230 volts, com­plete wiring har­ness­es had to be replaced. In order to solve the prob­lem, the pump spe­cial­ists quick­ly pro­vid­ed the nec­es­sary skilled work­ers them­selves. Addi­tion­al costs incurred by hir­ing a third-par­ty com­pa­ny were thus avoid­ed, entire­ly in the cus­tomer’s inter­est. Eich­er explains: “We real­ly liked the prob­lem-solv­ing approach here. Work­ing togeth­er with our own staff, we were able to meet the chal­lenge togeth­er effi­cient­ly and at short notice.”

Financing according to customer requirements

Messe München chose the pur­chase mod­el for the pump replace­ment. Alter­na­tive­ly, a retro­fit would also be pos­si­ble with­out addi­tion­al costs. PesCon­tract­ing offers com­pa­nies var­i­ous financ­ing mod­els to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion and costs through the use of high­ly effi­cient pumps, while at the same time pre­serv­ing liq­uid­i­ty. The high­light: “The costs are based on the ver­i­fi­able reduc­tion in con­sump­tion, so that no invest­ment is required on the part of the cus­tomer — includ­ing inven­to­ry and retro­fitting,” illus­trates Michael Buch­ta, Sales Manager.

Tailor-made energy and CO2 savings

The pos­i­tive effects of the pump replace­ment quick­ly became appar­ent. Even with the first mea­sure, 140,000 kilo­grams of CO2 emis­sions could be saved. “With this project, we were able to get the max­i­mum ener­gy sav­ings and ener­gy effi­cien­cy out of our heat­ing sys­tem,” affirms Eich­er, offer­ing high praise. Because not only did the plan­ning with the ser­vice provider turn out “pic­ture-per­fect” in his opin­ion, the imple­men­ta­tion was also car­ried out exact­ly as promised. After the project was com­plet­ed, the results were includ­ed in the trade fair’s new TÜV audit process. “We are pleased to have con­tributed to reduc­ing the car­bon foot­print,” adds Bindl.