Together with the Fraunhofer-Institut and the Technical University Braunschweig BECHEM wins the German Raw Material Efficiency Prize 2011

Together with the Fraunhofer-Institut for Process and Technology, Freising, and the Institute for Machine Tools and Product Engineering of the Technical University Braunschweig, BECHEM was awarded with the German Raw Material Efficiency Prize in the category ”Research Institution“. The Federal Minister of Economics, Dr. Philipp Rösler, and the President of the Federal Institute for Geoscience and Raw Materials, Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Kümpel, submitted the prize in Berlin on 30th November.

With this prize, the development of the completely new water-based coolant BERUFLUID was awarded. The viscosity of this coolant is adjusted by means of a polymer. This polymer lubricant for metal working operations combines the high cooling effect of water with the excellent lubricity of a conventional, mineral-oil based lubricant. The application of this polymer lubricant guarantees considerably improved environmental impacts. A comparable ecobalance ascertained among others considerable advantages with regard to consumption of resources and climatic relevance. In various tests in our laboratory and metal working companies the new BERUFLUID was successfully analysed with regard to performance and recirculation. In the meantime the coolant has become an inherent part of the BECHEM product range. The successful BERUFLUID is the visionary answer to all questions resulting from the problems related to the supply of resources.

For the first time this year the ”German Raw Material Efficiency Prize“ was presented by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology in cooperation with the German Raw Material Agency. It awards extraordinary company examples for raw material efficient products, processes or services and application oriented research results.

(from the left): Dr. Philipp Rösler, Federal Minister of Economics and Technology, Prof. Dr. Horst-Christian Langowski, Fraunhofer-Institut IVV, Freising, apl. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christoph Herrmann, TU Braunschweig, Dr. Heinz Dwuletzki, BECHEM, and Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Kümpel, Federal Institute for Geoscience and Raw Materials.

In December BECHEM organised the 8th Nonferrous Metal Forming Meeting, this year in the conference centre of the Westfalenhallen in Dortmund. More than 110 participants followed the interesting presentations which, in the first half of the day, covered the subject of future energies. Among others presentations on wind power plants (repower systems), photovoltaics (ARGE Solar) and technical superconductors (Bruker EAS) were held. The “situation of energy supply today and in the future” was examined by representatives of the municipal energy supplier Iserlohn.

In the second half of the day mutual lectures of BECHEM and guest speakers were presented to the participants of the wire and tube drawing industry. Main subjects were the development in aluminium wire drawing (BECHEM/REBER SYSTEMATIC), the high-precision measurement of drawing dies by means of image data processing (OEG), as well as super fine wire drawing and super fine filtration using the example of fully synthetic drawing lubricants (BECHEM/Fil-TEC Filter).