In addition to the quality of the material, the safety aspect was particularly important to VARTA. “Since it is a fully welded system, it is absolutely tight,” explains Thomas Müller, managing director of Dürr und Feil GmbH, who were commissioned to carry out the installation. In detail this means that aquatherm pipes and fittings are connected to one another by fusion. The plastic melts into a homogeneous, cohesive unit and a permanently tight connection. “In addition, the low weight compared to metallic pipe systems made our work much easier,” says Thomas Müller. “Even under the hall roofs with great heights, the pipe network installation was possible without any problems,” says the expert. Since there are no flying sparks when welding plastic, production did not have to be interrupted during assembly.

For cold distribution, among other things, a large central distributor of 3.75 meters in length was prefabricated in the aquatherm factory in Attendorn according to precise pre-planning and customer requirements. “With the prefabricated distributors and special components, we saved a lot of time, which was convenient for us in ongoing production,” says Markus Egetenmeier. The distributor was delivered to the construction site ready for installation and only had to be connected there.

Based on the positive experience, VARTA decided to use the system in other areas as well. In the meantime, not only the cooling network, but also vacuum and compressed air lines have been implemented with aquatherm blue pipe. At the production site in Nördlingen, the headquarters of VARTA Storage GmbH, one of the leading manufacturers of energy storage solutions for private households and large storage applications, the company has renovated various production facilities and used aquatherm blue pipe in dimensions up to 160 mm for compressed air and vacuum.

Compressed air is an important component in industrial production. Decisive for trouble-free and effective use as an energy source is not only the quality of the compressed air, which can be influenced by impurities such as dust, oil or moisture, but also the quality of the pipe system with which the air is directed to where it is needed. The vacuum range below 300 millibars, i.e. at a pressure well below atmospheric pressure, requires special properties from the pipeline system used. “It was important to us that the pipeline system used is very pressure-resistant and dimensionally stable,” explains Markus Egetenmeier. The secure connection of the pipes prevents the air from escaping at the critical connection points, as can be the case with mechanical connections. This keeps the energy requirement and operating costs low.

In addition to the installation work that has already been completed, VARTA is planning further projects with aquatherm products.