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A Company of the JÄGER Group
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A Company of the JÄGER Group

JÄGER Busi­ness Blog

Sus­tain­able Rub­ber Pro­duc­tion at Jäger Gum­mi und Kunststoff 

03.11.2022   | Rebec­ca Goetze

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In the face of advanc­ing cli­mate change, we at Jäger Gum­mi und Kun­st­stoff have been com­mit­ted to reduc­ing our car­bon foot­print as much as pos­si­ble for years. In an ener­gy-inten­sive indus­try such as rub­ber pro­duc­tion, there are admit­ted­ly lim­its to these efforts. Nev­er­the­less, we have been able to achieve con­sid­er­able suc­cess in coop­er­a­tion with our sis­ter com­pa­ny Artemis, which sup­ports us as an inter­nal pro­duc­tion part­ner. In this blog post, we would like to present the mea­sures we have used to achieve this.

Analy­sis of ener­gy consumption

A pre­req­ui­site for a suc­cess­ful sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy is a detailed knowl­edge base. There­fore, we first inves­ti­gat­ed which busi­ness units con­sume how much ener­gy. In the course of this, we were able to iden­ti­fy six major ener­gy con­sump­tion groups: 
  • Injec­tion mold­ing machines and vul­can­iz­ing presses
  • Met­al­work­ing
  • Com­pressed air supply
  • Process steam
  • Light­ing
  • Com­pound­ing
This analy­sis formed the basis for deter­min­ing our ener­gy base­line — a com­par­i­son of inputs, bro­ken down into ener­gy sources, and out­puts, i.e., ener­gy con­sump­tion per point of use. The pri­ma­ry ener­gy sources or types of ener­gy used by Jäger are nat­ur­al gas, heat­ing oil and elec­tric­i­ty. This com­pares to the fol­low­ing con­sump­tion points at Artemis: 
  • Steam gen­er­a­tion for vul­can­iza­tion press­es and autoclaves
  • Heat­ing for offices and fac­to­ry halls
  • Injec­tion mold­ing machines and spray­ing machines
  • Met­al­work­ing and spe­cial machines
  • Cen­tral sup­ply, i.e. com­pressed air for com­pres­sors, the boil­er oper­a­tion and free cooling
Based on our analy­sis, we were able to cal­cu­late the ener­gy con­sump­tion as well as the CO2 emis­sions per kilo­gram of rub­ber mass processed. We took the result as the actu­al state as well as a key fig­ure to eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of our improve­ment measures. 

Mea­sures tak­en to increase ener­gy efficiency

Based on the con­sump­tion analy­ses, we iden­ti­fied and imple­ment­ed a num­ber of opti­miza­tion mea­sures. Some of these were tech­ni­cal in nature, while oth­ers relat­ed more to orga­ni­za­tion­al factors. 

Ener­gy generation

Our first opti­miza­tion mea­sure was to change the ener­gy source. In the past, Jäger obtained ther­mal ener­gy main­ly from crude oil. In the mean­time, we have large­ly switched to nat­ur­al gas, which has sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er CO2 emissions. 

For info: 

Giv­en the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, this mea­sure is not set in stone. Since we have the option of using both gas and oil, a hybrid ener­gy mix is also conceivable. 

Light­ing

In par­al­lel, we have refur­bished our light­ing. Instead of HQL lights, we now use LED lamps exclu­sive­ly. Some of these are equipped with day­light sen­sors that reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion to the bare min­i­mum. As a result, we were able to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion for light­ing by 70 percent. 

Insu­la­tion

Next, we addressed the issue of mold insu­la­tion and ther­mal insu­la­tion. To this end, we fit­ted the major­i­ty of our injec­tion mold­ing molds with insu­lat­ing lay­ers and improved the insu­la­tion on the machine side so that the molds no longer emit heat to the machine frame. Com­bined, these mea­sures have reduced ener­gy con­sump­tion per square meter of mold by 1.4 kW. 

Iso­lat­ed mold in production

Dri­ve and con­trol technology

The dri­ve and con­trol tech­nol­o­gy was also the sub­ject of our opti­miza­tion mea­sures. For exam­ple, our injec­tion mold­ing sys­tems now no longer use con­ven­tion­al hydraulic motors and pumps, but a com­bi­na­tion of small­er ser­vo­mo­tors that can all be addressed indi­vid­u­al­ly in the inter­ests of demand-ori­ent­ed ser­vo­hy­draulics. Where pos­si­ble, we have retro­fit­ted fre­quen­cy con­vert­ers and used more ener­gy-effi­cient dri­ves. Accord­ing to an inter­nal direc­tive, new motors must not be worse than IE3. We have equipped our exist­ing plants with phase-angle con­trollers that briefly throt­tle the machine’s out­put dur­ing low-load or no-load phas­es, there­by reduc­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant dur­ing long heat­ing phas­es and result­ed in ener­gy sav­ings of around 10 percent. 

Reduc­tion of ener­gy losses

A major issue was and still is the sys­tem­at­ic review of weak points. We exam­ined all our machines and sys­tems to see if ener­gy was being lost some­where. This includ­ed pos­si­ble com­pressed air leaks, weak points in insu­la­tion areas, and a check of steam fit­tings using sound mea­sure­ment. The iden­ti­fied leaks or dam­age were then elim­i­nat­ed by our main­te­nance depart­ment. This is a con­tin­u­ous process that we always continue. 

Test­ing for leak­age in production

Orga­ni­za­tion­al measures

At the orga­ni­za­tion­al lev­el, we have above all cre­at­ed a cross-depart­men­tal aware­ness of ener­gy-effi­cient work­ing. We now have an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary ener­gy team com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all ener­gy-rel­e­vant areas as well as the man­age­ment. This team meets reg­u­lar­ly to dis­cuss opti­miza­tion poten­tial and pos­si­ble improve­ment mea­sures. We have also estab­lished a com­pa­ny sug­ges­tion scheme that enables employ­ees to sub­mit ideas for sav­ing energy. 

Con­clu­sion

With the help of the mea­sures described, we suc­ceed­ed in sav­ing more than 2,000 tons of CO2 between 2012 and 2020. In addi­tion, we were able to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion per kilo­gram of rub­ber pro­duced by 20 per­cent in the same peri­od. As a result, we are not only mak­ing our con­tri­bu­tion to com­bat­ing cli­mate change, but also reduc­ing our ener­gy costs on top of that — an advan­tage that we also pass on to our cus­tomers. For exam­ple, we are less affect­ed by price fluc­tu­a­tions on the ener­gy mar­kets and there­fore do not have to pass on ris­ing costs in full to our customers. 
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Author: Rebec­ca Goetze

Rebec­ca Goet­ze stud­ied indus­tri­al engi­neer­ing at Leib­niz Uni­ver­si­ty in Hanover with a focus on pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy and has been strate­gic head of pur­chas­ing at Artemis since 2019. In par­al­lel, she has also been the com­pa­ny’s ener­gy man­age­ment offi­cer since 2012. 

r.goetze@artemis-kautschuk.de | +49 51195928863

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Jäger Gummi und Kunststoff GmbH
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