Cli­mate pro­tec­tion: Reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions

with intel­li­gent prod­uct design

Dif­fer­ent types of plas­tics and elas­tomers dif­fer in terms of the CO2 emis­sions gen­er­at­ed dur­ing their pro­cess­ing. Sil­i­cones, for exam­ple, have to be reheat­ed, which leads to longer heat­ing times and thus high­er ener­gy con­sump­tion. In prin­ci­ple, there­fore, a change of mate­r­i­al can have a pos­i­tive effect on the CO2 footprint.

On the oth­er hand, the selec­tion of the appro­pri­ate mate­r­i­al depends pri­mar­i­ly on the oper­at­ing con­di­tions of the com­po­nent. Once the require­ments in terms of abra­sion, Shore hard­ness, tem­per­a­tures, sta­t­ic or dynam­ic loads and chem­i­cal resis­tance have been tak­en into account, there is usu­al­ly lit­tle room for opti­miza­tion for a poten­tial CO2 reduction.

A bet­ter approach is there­fore to ensure that the mate­r­i­al has the longest pos­si­ble ser­vice life. The more often a com­po­nent is defec­tive, the more often it has to be replaced and dis­posed of. This is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the elas­tomer sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar, since rub­ber, unlike plas­tics and met­als, can hard­ly be recy­cled. Extend­ing the ser­vice life of a com­po­nent can there­fore sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve its CO2 balance.

To this end, the design should select a mate­r­i­al that exceeds the require­ments of the appli­ca­tion sce­nario. For cost rea­sons, the choice usu­al­ly falls on a mate­r­i­al that just meets the require­ments, which is reflect­ed in high­er wear effects in the long run.

If a com­po­nent has to with­stand 150° C, for exam­ple, a mate­r­i­al is often used that is designed for pre­cise­ly this tem­per­a­ture. The ther­mal load on the com­po­nent is cor­re­spond­ing­ly high, as it is always oper­at­ing at its lim­it. If instead the design choos­es a mate­r­i­al that only reach­es its lim­its at 180° C, the load is lower.

How­ev­er, this is the opti­mum case. In prac­tice, high-qual­i­ty and thus more expen­sive mate­ri­als are often out of the ques­tion because the com­pa­ny is in a com­pet­i­tive sit­u­a­tion and can only increase the man­u­fac­tur­ing costs of its prod­ucts to a lim­it­ed extent.

Here it is impor­tant to find a com­pro­mise between price and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Depend­ing on the posi­tion­ing of the com­pa­ny, it may make sense to rely on more durable but more expen­sive mate­ri­als and to com­mu­ni­cate this openly.