Cleanzone shows the way to energy efficiency

09 luglio 2024

Cleanrooms’ energy efficiency has become a major issue over the past twenty years. There are many factors that can be addressed to successfully improve energy efficiency. Visitors to the cleanroom trade fair Cleanzone on 25 and 26 September 2024 in Frankfurt am Main will find out what these are and what can be done about them.

With wars and other crises around the globe, energy supplies appear to be heading towards a future characterised by uncertainty or higher costs – or both.

There is also a need to reduce carbon footprints and continue lowering greenhouse gas emissions. These imperatives can be seen in the European Green Deal, which calls for climate neutrality by 2050. The EU Taxonomy Regulation supplies the technical framework. The aim is to make it possible to measure the degree to which an investment is ecologically sustainable. This is combined with disclosure obligations that require companies to reveal their ‘non-financial’ ecological and sustainability efforts.

All of these factors are forcing companies to save energy. But can this really be done in cleanrooms?

Ideas for energy efficiency with a multiplier effect

First and foremost, a cleanroom must be just that – clean. Energy efficiency can only be of secondary importance here. Before the 2000s, people gave little thought to energy costs, but instead focused on achieving the level of purity necessary for the process. Yet conditioning and purifying air in particular is energy-intensive, and this continues to grow more expensive. As a result, the past twenty years have seen this process change from an always-available commodity to a cost-critical factor.

Today people are paying far closer attention to energy efficiency, and one reason is that they are more aware of its importance to the bottom line. For example, a full 60 percent of the Fraunhofer Society’s energy costs are accounted for by its cleanrooms. The good thing about this: energy saving ideas should result in large multiplier effects, and the Fraunhofer Society is already working to take advantage of this potential.

There is also a lot going on at the Association of German Engineers (VDI), where a working group is currently developing a new set of guidelines for energy efficiency. They are revising the guideline VDI 2083 Sheet 4.2 “Cleanroom technology – Energy efficiency”, which has been around since 2011 (and is therefore no longer entirely up to date).

Everyone with an interest in this process has a seat at the table, in particular those involved in planning, building and operating cleanroom facilities, representatives of research and education institutes, and manufacturers of measurement and control technology and cleanroom components.

Thomas Wollstein, who is serving as a research consultant in this VDI working group, is happy with the progress being made: “We hope that we will soon be able to issue the new guidelines.” As to the content, he can already reveal that ‘Cleanroom and ventilation concepts’ and ‘Energy-efficient operation’ are the new guidelines’ two biggest areas of focus. The following topics have also been given special treatment: ‘Energy requirements of cleanrooms’, ‘Energy-relevant parameters and special features of cleanrooms’, ‘Process for assessing and increasing energy efficiency’, ‘User and planning requirements’, ‘Commissioning’ and ‘Optimising operation in terms of energy consumption’.

The new components of VDI 2083 are frequently similar to the corresponding sessions of the DIN EN ISO 14644 standard, and this should come as no surprise, because VDI working groups are generally participants in global committees, so their requirements have international significance.

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