Producing in a climate-neutral and cost-effective manner
[27.10.2023] Picture: © Frank Eppler
Started out of genuine conviction, IMOS has been working ever more intensively since 2018 on the issue of "climate protection and reducing its own CO2 footprint" and has been pursuing the goal of producing optical components in a climate-neutral manner. With this in mind, in January 2020 IMOS created a masterplan in collaboration with KEFF (Baden-Württemberg State Agency for Environmental Technology and Resource Efficiency)
After 31/2 years of conversion measures and high levels of investment, the optics manufacturer's energy savings already amount to 46% to date. In the area of "gas consumption for heating", it actually proved possible to reduce annual consumption by 75%. This was ensured, among other things, by the taking of a variety of measures. One of these involved a sophisticated heat recovery system with a new gas hybrid plant. Here, the heat generated by the production machines and compressors is collected, passed through several heat exchangers and the recovered waste heat is then temporarily stored in buffer tanks and fed into the heating system as required. Assuming that a tree absorbs a global average of about 10kg of CO2 per year, this single saving measure alone will result in a CO2 sequestration equivalent to that of around 5570 trees.
Award
For these many different measures and the considerable savings, IMOS was awarded the second place award from the Network of Regional Competence Centres for Energy Efficiency (KEFF) at the "KEFF Summit Strikers 2022/2023" event in Stuttgart. This came with prize money, which IMOS subsequently donated to the treatment of a seriously ill child.
Future
However, the measures implemented so far are not the end of the story. Further energy-saving measures are currently being worked on. As part of this, up to 2 million Euro will be invested over the next few years. The goal of IMOS is to produce on a climate-neutral and economical basis at its location and to mitigate the effects of further rising energy prices for customers. In this way, optical components will continue to be manufactured cost-effectively.
