Deep Dive #11 - How to measure Energy Consumption?

00:00:04: Hello and welcome to another episode of Deep Dive into Applied Science.

00:00:10: Today we are talking with someone from the environmental campus Birkenfeld and our guest can introduce himself.

00:00:18: Thank you Martin.

00:00:19: Hello together.

00:00:20: My name is Jochen Brinkmann.

00:00:22: I'm a PhD researcher at the environmental campus of Birkenfeld and well... Can I directly start with my topic or

00:00:31: if you want to?

00:00:32: Yes.

00:00:32: Well,

00:00:33: my research topic is resource efficiency in additive manufacturing.

00:00:37: Maybe you can also describe your project a bit broader, but still in one sentence if possible.

00:00:44: My research is about optimizing resource and energy efficiency in additive manufacturing with energy model analyzers.

00:00:55: What exactly is Additive manufacturing.

00:00:59: Okay, the easiest word in my title.

00:01:01: Thank you for this.

00:01:03: Additive manufacturing is also called free-d printing.

00:01:07: So it's like the free-d printers we use in our households.

00:01:11: Usually the free-d printers use a plastic.

00:01:15: The process is called fuse deposition modeling.

00:01:20: So the plastic is melted into a layer, so a sheet.

00:01:24: and a model is built it up.

00:01:27: The process I use is called PBFLBM.

00:01:33: It stands for PowderBadFusion, or PBFL, PowderBadFusion, LBM, so laser beam and the M is for metal.

00:01:43: So my work is with metal powder and the process, well today is called PBFLBM and it comes from SLM, the name for selective laser melting.

00:01:56: So I use a metal powder, it's in a powder bed and the laser beam melts the powder to one layer.

00:02:06: After one layer, a new sheet of powder is spread to the powder bed and the laser beam starts again to melt down the hatches.

00:02:17: Before we dive deeper into some other technical questions, one question before.

00:02:23: Why exactly did you choose that topic and not something different?

00:02:27: Well, from my basic studies, well, I'm a mechanical engineering and I made a master's degrees in environmental and energy technology.

00:02:38: I have a split specialty, one in engineering, one in energy technology, and we created a research project.

00:02:52: about well to speciality is the resource efficiency and additive manufacturing.

00:02:57: So that's why I chose this.

00:02:59: You also talked about the resource efficiency.

00:03:03: So what exactly do I understand under this term?

00:03:08: How do you find out which process needs which amount of energy?

00:03:12: Energy is a resource.

00:03:14: So when we talk about different resources, I do not only measure the energy amount.

00:03:23: I also measure the amount of powder that is used.

00:03:27: So there's some waste powder.

00:03:30: For melting processes we need inerting gases like nitrogen or argon.

00:03:37: So there's a consumption of these technical gases.

00:03:43: There's pressurized air.

00:03:44: There are some usability in the... So this is what I understand on the resources and as well as the energy consumption.

00:03:56: How do you measure the energy consumption?

00:04:00: Okay, that's kind of easy.

00:04:01: I install an energy meter.

00:04:04: So it's like a data logger.

00:04:06: On the one side it measures the voltage and the ampere to calculate the power that we use.

00:04:14: And on the other side it data locks the values within a small amount of time.

00:04:21: So it's like an energy logger in your household.

00:04:25: So you have one.

00:04:27: And this smart meter measures the amount of energy every fifteen minutes, but I use a smaller time spread.

00:04:38: I use data in the range of ten milliseconds to one second, so that I have a deeper look into the energy data.

00:04:48: So after you gathered all that data, what exactly do you do with it?

00:04:53: The analysis of this data is... one main part of my research, because as I mentioned, I data-locked the data in the amount of one second, so a free print or a process to build up, let's say, one hundred and tensile tests per semen needs an amount of forty hours.

00:05:19: Yes,

00:05:19: exactly.

00:05:21: Quite a lot of time.

00:05:22: So there's the voltage, there's the power of free phases, there's the consumption of pressurized air, of the inert gases and so on.

00:05:30: So I have data points of more than over three hundred thousand points.

00:05:35: So I have to program, analyze this programs and Python to analyze this.

00:05:43: So in the end, I have a consumption lines or energy.

00:05:48: diagram how much power I need at which point of the process.

00:05:54: The interesting thing is then that I can split this information into different phases and systems.

00:06:02: So that's the point where we dive deep into energy modeling.

00:06:07: That's what I do.

00:06:08: I use these data, analyze them and build up an energy model, split it into different phases and systems to predict the energy consumption of future processes.

00:06:23: So with ZData, you basically can compare how much energy different systems use.

00:06:32: Is that right?

00:06:33: Yes, it is.

00:06:33: So with these energy models, we can more or less directly compare How high the energy amount or resource amount in different systems is.

00:06:47: The problem is every system is specific.

00:06:50: So some systems need nitrogen as inert gas, other systems don't have pressurized gas, so the basic parameters are different.

00:07:02: So you need one energy model for every specific machine.

00:07:08: In other words, companies can also use this data to see which model or which system is the most efficient.

00:07:16: Yes or no?

00:07:18: Again?

00:07:18: The best answer.

00:07:20: One idea of an energy model is exactly this, which is the most efficient system I can buy for my process.

00:07:29: Yes, for this, easy models or over-the-fump models like the SEC model is called.

00:07:36: a specific energy consumption model is a good idea.

00:07:41: So you get an amount of how much kilowatt hours you need to melt one kilogram of metal.

00:07:50: But you have to consider that there is a difference between aluminium powder and stainless steel powder.

00:07:59: So also this easy model like the SEC is specific for every machine and every metal powder or even plastic powder.

00:08:12: So I can imagine that you use different amounts of energy to melt.

00:08:18: one kilogram of steel or I don't know one kilogram of plastic.

00:08:22: It's probably very different.

00:08:24: So I'm not quite sure in which industries you have to melt one kilogram of steel.

00:08:30: So which industries exactly can profit from your work or can take a benefit out of it?

00:08:39: Well, in different industries, We need some lightweight products, for example.

00:08:45: We want to optimize the weight of products or of models.

00:08:52: So additive manufacturing has more degrees of freedom, like lightweight builds, holes, lattice structures, so that when you have a full cup of metal powder from a CNC machine, a full body cup and with a letter structure there would be a small construction structure in letter structure called.

00:09:19: So these letters structures make the cup much more lighter than a full body cup.

00:09:25: So other degrees of freedom are like integrating of functions, for example, or initialize topology optimization.

00:09:36: So when I stand on this cup, there is a specific force to this cup.

00:09:40: The topology optimization calculates this force and changes the thickness of the walls along the lines of the force.

00:09:53: These models with the lattice structure, double ID optimization functions inside like cooling channels inside of the cap.

00:10:02: They can only produce by additive manufacturing, not by conventional manufacturing.

00:10:09: So this is what the industry can use.

00:10:13: My empirical energy model is more on the construction site.

00:10:21: So with my model, a constructor could check how high the amount of energy is used for his constructed model, for example, or if it changes the direction of the process, if the energy consumption has also changed.

00:10:43: For this whole project, you also collaborate with the Carl Zeiss Foundation.

00:10:48: Please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:10:50: How does this collaboration look like?

00:10:52: Well, since this year, there is the new Carl Zeiss project that was called Kraft.

00:11:00: Kraft stands for circular economy and resource efficiency through additive manufacturing.

00:11:08: That's a complicated title.

00:11:09: It is, but it's nearly my research topic.

00:11:14: So that's why I collaborate with this.

00:11:16: It's a really interesting collaborative project with two More institutions.

00:11:24: One is the University of Applied Science, Arlen.

00:11:27: And the other one is the KIT, one Kassel Institute of Technology.

00:11:32: And when exactly did you start your whole PhD?

00:11:35: Well, the start of my PhD journey was the first start of the first research project I got.

00:11:42: This project was called RERAP, Resource Efficiency in Rapid Prototyping.

00:11:49: with the aim of the comparison of conventional manufacturing to additive manufacturing and the energy analysis.

00:11:57: So this was the start of my research and also of my PhD.

00:12:03: And a difficult question for some people.

00:12:06: When do you plan on finishing it?

00:12:08: Next year.

00:12:10: Yes, that's

00:12:10: very specific.

00:12:12: And if you look back at your whole journey, what has been the biggest challenge so far?

00:12:18: A rewrap started in the year, two thousand nineteen.

00:12:22: We all know there's one black time period in the beginning of two thousand twenty.

00:12:29: A black hole.

00:12:31: Yeah, it sucks all the energy out

00:12:33: of us.

00:12:33: Whatever talk about this period, what we did, what we thought and so on.

00:12:39: Well, this was basically the first challenge in this research project.

00:12:45: One challenge was caused by the pandemic situation, some of the partners had had economical problems.

00:12:56: So they said, sorry, but we cannot do research now.

00:12:59: We have to concentrate on our on our business.

00:13:03: And the other one was the that we could not meet.

00:13:08: We could not meet with other researchers and so on.

00:13:11: This was one of the bigger challenges.

00:13:14: Yeah, the biggest, I think.

00:13:16: Yeah.

00:13:17: So Overall, it sounds like a lot of industries, at least from my point of view, can profit from additive manufacturing.

00:13:26: If people are interested in your work, in your person, in any information whatsoever, how can they contact you?

00:13:33: How can they reach out to you?

00:13:35: Just search for your Ahem Brinkmann at the homepage of Environmental Campus of Bergenfeld.

00:13:41: It would be easy.

00:13:43: Everything that is tagged with CCDS, card size, stiftung or craft project, anything else.

00:13:52: So, well, I now work with or in this project.

00:13:57: So there is a good possibility to contact me.

00:14:00: Yes.

00:14:01: Perfect.

00:14:02: So your contact details are on the website of Trier University of Applied Sciences.

00:14:08: So.

00:14:08: Thank you very much for coming on DeepDive, for presenting your research, your topic and so on.

00:14:14: I wish you all the best for the next year.

00:14:17: I hope you finish the project.

00:14:20: And thank you very much for watching, maybe for listening.

00:14:25: And we will see and hear each other in the next episode of DeepDive Interapplied Science.