Heating Concept with Waste Heat?

Machine Heat Recovery System - the igus heating concept with waste heat

igus GmbH , as of 2023, has around 800+ injection molding machines, distributed over several buildings.?How do they manage to use the waste heat? That's what a team of igus engineers asked themselves and started trying it out.

The Result

The concept for heating without gas by using the #waste heat from the machines. The plan: to no longer heat any buildings at the company's Cologne site with gas and to make the concept freely available to engineers and mechanical engineers, i.e. to industry.?

The idea

During the #injectionmolding process, the hydraulic motors get heated. Preventing them from overheating, the motors are cooled with cooling water. The cooling water is provided by cooling towers, from which the cold water is pumped to the machines. There, the cooling water absorbs the waste heat from the motors and is heated and fed to the fan heater. A fan located on the fan heater, heats the drawn-in air and thus heats the hall. At the same time, the heated cooling water cools down during this process and is pumped back to the cooling tower and the process begins again.

The control unit in detail

The device developed by igus #engineers sees to it that a fan heater within the production hall is supplied with maximum #heat energy and at the same time prevents machines from being damaged by excessively high temperatures in the return flow.?

The heated cooling water from the machines enters the device via the inlet on the right-hand side of the device. Water flows through the electrically adjustable?ball valve?to a?flow meter?that measures the temperature. The temperature of the cooling water in this area must be at least the same as the desired room temperature so that the water can be routed to the fan heater via the?dirt trap?and the?manual ball valve. Otherwise, the?electric ball valve?blocks the passage and opens the bypass via the?electric ball valve. The water cools down as it passes through the fan heater. This temperature is recorded by the?temperature sensor. The heat output of the fan can be calculated from the temperature difference and the flow, which is shown on the display. Since there is hot water inside the pipes, the device can be locked to avoid burns. Since there is always dirt in the return pipelines, a?dirt trap?is used to filter coarse particles. In order to replace this from time to time, the?ball valve?can be turned over manually. This will prevent any water from flowing back down from the fan heater and flooding the unit.