Driving the circular economy by extending the useful life of traditional machinery

The Reclaim initiative was born last October as a response to the community's commitment to promote the circular economy by extending the useful life of traditional machinery.

As explained by the manager, Nieves Murillo, the objective is to demonstrate a series of technologies and strategies that support a new paradigm for remodelling and redesigning industrial equipment installed in the factory: from physical sensors to virtual sensors and digital twins.

In this way, resource savings are achieved by reusing the equipment, rather than discarding it. The challenges set by the consortium, which is led by the German SME Harms & Wende GMBH, are to achieve a reduction in machine maintenance of 40 % and between 10 and 15 % of unexpected costs. As far as machine components are concerned, the goal is to reduce maintenance costs to 35 %, while in production lines the aim is to decrease them by 20 to 25 %.

Pilot projects in five industrial environments

The new paradigm to be developed by Reclaim will be demonstrated in five industrial environments: TECNALIA is taking part in two of them.

The first case study will be carried out at the footwear company Muchos. In collaboration with the Association for the Promotion, Research, Development and Technological Innovation of the Footwear and Related Industries of La Rioja (Ctcr), we will try to optimise the production processes of the cutting machines that produce footwear buttresses. We will design heterogeneous sensors combining different sensor technologies with electronics and communications technologies in order to offer a tailor-made solution. "We're not just talking about automation. We are going a step further by digitalising the machine in a complementary way," mentioned Murillo.

The second pilot project will be carried out in the Turkish company Zorluteks, one of the largest textile companies in the country. It will collaborate with the Spanish company Advantic Sistemas y Servicios.

The initiative will focus on a bleaching machine for large fabrics that needs to be monitored. This activity will require optimising the control parameters of the machine by using virtual sensors which will control the differences in the process in order to monitor the bleaching based on variables such as the consumption of water, energy and additives used in the machine.

TECNALIA will facilitate the transition from the traditional production model to a circular economy by undertaking the Reclaim project together with 21 European entities.