A leading European company in the wood-based-products industry with several plants in Germany and other European countries. Target groups are both architects and tradespeople from the construction industry, as well as industrial customers in the building materials and furniture manufacturing industries plus retailers (building supplier chains).
When making MDF panels, the wood fibers are conveyed with the aid of air in pipes to the mat forming bunker. The fan propeller (radial fan) with a diameter of approx. 5 m is driven with the help of a flat belt (10,500 mm x 480 mm). The power to be transmitted is approx. 900 kW. Until now, our Siegling Extremultus GT 80 (with wedge splice) has been used for the purpose.
In order to drive the gigantic propeller, a lot of energy is of course used – with the associated electricity costs. The remit was to look for ways of cutting electricity consumption. Forbo Siegling engineers used our B_Rex belt calculation program to identify that another product from the Siegling Extremultus range should work more efficiently in this application. The product concerned is the GT 80A – a belt with a tension member made of truly endless aramide fibers.
And they were right: the B_Rex calculations proved to be correct in real-world conditions. The aramide belt cut the power loss, therefore saving 20 kW of drive power. For the customer, this meant savings of approx. €10,000 per year. And in terms of the environment, more than 80 tons of CO2 are saved each year.
These are impressive figures that are slightly impaired due to higher noise emissions. However, it is highly likely that by taking appropriate action, such as fine-tuning the belts and machinery, or by applying (one-off) noise-reduction steps, most of the emissions could be compensated for.