Danfoss digs deep into environmental issues

WasteStreams recently had the opportunity to pick the brain of Danfoss president, Sven Ruder. In this revealing interview, we take a look at the company's successful philosophy and why the environment is a key concern to a number of its processes.

Environmental concerns and being responsible citizens feature high on the Danfoss agenda. How long has this been the case for the company?

This has been part of our company culture since the beginning. With a heritage starting in 1933 based in the midst of prime Danish agricultural heartland, our founder Mads Clausen was always profoundly aware of the need to balance the demands of building a strong industrial enterprise and the natural environment, therefore benefiting the society.

Danfoss initiated local environmental initiatives long before it was a popularist move. For example, our first move to implement factory wastewater treatment facilities was revolutionary in Europe at the time. Danfoss worked with the local council to formulate standards of water treatment which are still considered groundbreaking today.

Can you expand on the philosophy?

Environmental compatibility is one of the pillars supporting our development as a major global industrial enterprise.

Danfoss is, in Danish terms, a very large company in a small society. Many of the decisions made within Danfoss influence the society and we are very conscious about this. This consciousness also transfers to the rest of the world, as it is part of our global make-up.

The ethos 'Making Modern Living Possible' is so much more than fashionable words - it is part of our global psyche to improve the human society's quality of life in balance with natural environment.

In short, environmental concern has always been a high priority, directly at our factories and also by assisting our customers to improve both their bottom line and their environmental footprint.

What steps do you take in your manufacturing processes to minimise environmental impact?

We run a continued improvement process which means that every year we have new improved targets for environment impact. Here are some examples:

To assess the production's impact on the environment, Danfoss follows the ISO 14001 standards that deal with the use of energy, chemicals, emissions levels, machine safety, waste management and ergonomics.

The ISO 14001 standard is based on the methodology known as Plan-Do-Check-Act in order enable an organisation to develop and implement a policy and objectives which take into account legal and other requirements and information on significant environmental aspects.

There are many examples on how we put ISO 14001 into practice. We have reduced packaging consumption by 50% in Danfoss Silicon Power in Germany - new packaging can be returned to the factory for re-use. Another example is Danfoss Drives, which has reduced the weight of the largest frequency converter by 60% and the size by 38%, which lessens the impact on environment in terms of less energy and raw material used.

In all product development projects in Danfoss, the environmental impact is evaluated in order to minimise energy and raw materials, but also to consider hazardous chemical substances and materials.

Restricted substances and materials

Hazardous chemical substances and materials are banned or restricted in production (negative list). This list was worked out in 1998 and is a very important tool for developers, but also for purchasers when evaluating and approving the suppliers.

Examples of banned substances are perfluorocarbons - cooling material - compliant with EU decisions and the Kyoto Protocol. Another example is flame retardants, which are hazardous for our health.

Danfoss also goes beyond national and international regulations; one example is the chlorinated substance tetrachloroethylene, which is banned in all our factories, although it has not been banned in international regulations. The substance is used for de-greasing processes, but not in Danfoss as it is hazardous both to the environment (water) and to our health.

Today, this list includes 42 substances/materials.

Suppliers and the environment

Suppliers are evaluated on quality, logistics, production, technology, management, employees and environment based on the principles of the UN Global Compact. Suppliers are required to comply with the negative list and are held responsible for meeting all relevant regulations.

WEEE

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive delegates responsibility to producers and importers to set up a system for recycling, re-use and financing of waste concerning electrical and electronic equipment. Danfoss products comply with the directive, if they are included.

RoHS

The Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive forbids the use of lead, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, mercury and the flame retardants PBB and PBDE in electrical/electronic equipment.

Danfoss Drives is leading the way in introducing alternatives to soldering materials with lead and has already successfully delivered its first products which meet the requirements in the RoHS directive.

Employee training

In 2006, more than 27,000 hours were used in the Danfoss factories for training employees in improving safety and environmental.

Audit and reporting

An external, third-party audit of the environment has been carried out for the last 10 years, with environmental issues included in the group's annual report.

Danfoss is claiming its new series of VLT drives can pay for themselves within nine months or less. This is a strong claim - how do you plan to get the message out there?

The principles for this possible payback are forged in basic physics. Given that at the design stage of a factory or commercial building many assumptions on system demand must be assumed.

This, of course, leads to oversizing of many of the sub systems - better to partially close a valve or gate on a production conveyor during commissioning than need to replace a total subsystem.

This, of course, is logical and there is every likelihood that in the future, demand will be increased, so why not build that expansion flexibility into the original design. The paybacks are striking when one considers centrifugal pumps and fans.

We know from the basic affinity laws that the reduction in consumed power is reduced by around 27%. Add to this the fact that flow reduction is directly proportional to speed reduction, it can be seen that a 10% reduction in flow leads to the same 27% reduction in consumed energy.

While not quite as dramatic, similar principles apply to conveyors, separators and many other industrial loads. The beauty of the technology is that application speed can be easily increased as demand increases and that the AC drive can maintain the system efficiency.

Can you explain the technology that gives this result?

The ability of this technology to independently adjust both the frequency and voltage going to a standard three-phase motor ensures motor and system efficiency can be maintained while introducing the flexibility of infinite speed adjustment.

These principles have remained unchanged since Danfoss introduced the first mass-produced AC drive in 1968. A more recent development has been to integrate the regulation technology into the AC drive.

Simply feed a sensor back to the drive, whether it be measuring flow, pressure, level or production tailback, input a design setpoint to the drive and it will modulate the motor speed to give the optimum outcome - simply inconceivable only a few short years ago.

The recent acceptance of high-level interface into these production environments, whether they be ethernet, Profibus, DeviceNet or similar, simply adds another dimension of flexibility and efficiency.

Looking ahead to the next five to ten years, what do you think the trends will be and how will they influence drive technology?

The two areas which we are already starting to see are improvements in efficiency and the ability to integrate more decision-making logic within the inverter brain. For example, the latest generation of Danfoss AC drives has lifter inverter efficiency to new levels, believed impossible only two or three years ago.

On the surface, one could say a 1% efficiency improvement does not sound significant. In reality, it is a huge technological step forward. Given a 400 kW drive running at the standard 97% efficiency will run with around 12 kW of losses, mainly heat, when running at full load that 1% improvement equates to almost a 5 kW reduction in losses.

A huge investment in research and development was required to lift inverter efficiency to 98%. Not only are these losses reduced by some 5 kW, but also that heat no longer needs to be dissipated by an auxiliary cooling system - a double efficiency win.

Integration of intelligence into the inverter brain has likewise allowed de-central real-time decisions to be made which optimise plant efficiency. This includes built-in application-specific knowledge that will open up areas where AC motors are not controlled today.