Hydria Water works actively to reduce its ecological footprint, and over the course of
the last year has developed two innovative product improvements that will have a large effect on the company’s environmental impact.
– For all our plastic chain scrapers, we deliver a wear component called a ‘wearshoe’, which protects the scrapers and extends their life from around two years to twenty. We deliver roughly 10,000 of these units every year, and began to investigate whether we could reduce the amount of plastic required says Andreas Riedel, Technical Manager for all of Hydria Water companies.
The old component weighed 189 g, but using simulation tools and field tests
a new wearshoe was developed. This weighs just 113 g, but has the same strength.
– This means that over the course of a normal year we will save 500 kg of plastic!
The new wearshoe is also equipped with three grooves that clearly show the degree of wear; this is in contrast to the earlier version, which had a plain surface and required manual measurements to determine the wear and when it should be replaced. Parallel to the work to develop the new wearshoe, a new idler shaft holder that holds up the plastic chain scraper system was also developed. This is significantly lighter than the original model but can handle the same load (even more), and has successfully been tested in the field.
– The old one weighed 11.4 kg and the new one only 4.1 kg, which means we save four tonnes of steel per year.
Producing steel involves the emission of large amounts of CO2, meaning that it has a large environmental impact. Our industry focuses on purifying water to create a cleaner world – if we do not look to ourselves and what we as foreground figures do, we would be very presumptuous!