Increasing the energy efficiency of industrial processes

Capacités’s role was to diagnose and optimise the production process on a client’s industrial site. The company needed to verify that its new autoclaves were functioning correctly in comparison to its older ones. This being a rather rare and unusual project for this sector, Capacités’s engineers rose to the challenge by combining their expertise in instrumentation and thermal modelling.
They firstly performed a detailed analysis of the functioning of the workshop, machinery and production steps. They then developed and deployed thermal sensors specific to this type of environment (pressurised machines and high-temperature steam) in order to be able to compare the temperatures for all of the autoclaves.

Their efforts gave rise to a precise analysis the thermal history of the parts during their production.
The engineers further outdid themselves by predicting the curing temperature of all of the parts, thanks to a numerical model developed specifically for this type of production and for elastomers. Based on the data generated by this model, Capacités’s experts were then able to recommend ways to optimise curing. The resulting process improvements not only contributed to enhancing the quality of the equipment manufacturer’s parts but also to increasing their energy efficiency.

To successfully complete this project, the Capacités’ experts benefited from support and technical equipment from the GEPEA, joint research unit of Université de Nantes and the CNRS.