Caprari – Ready for the Future

Thus manufacturers will have to increase the energy efficiency of their products, thereby reducing their environmental impact. All this affects over 1,000 categories of products, including machinery and equipment for the manufacturing industry.

Although the main savings can be achieved by improving the efficiency of motors, as manufacturers of centrifugal pumps, improving the energy efficiency of the actual pumps themselves would certainly be an important step towards cutting down on consumptions. This means that establishing an environmentally friendly project for water pumps is a priority commitment.

Water pumps are used in vast quantities in the European Union and throughout the world. The power consumed when the pumps are working certainly has an enormous impact on the environment, much greater than in all the other stages in the life cycle of the product. According to estimates, the annual consumption is about 109 TWh of electricity (EU statistics for 2005), equivalent to 50 Mt of CO2. Unless the right measures are taken, energy consumption could increase to 136 TWh in 2020. In conclusion, the development of technology able to significantly reduce electric power consumption when the pumps operate is an absolute priority.

Precise environmentally friendly design engineering criteria have been laid down for each product category and established by implementation of the EU Regulations, compliance with which is obligatory for each EU member country.

Conformity with the Regulations is linked to the CE mark of the product, which is essential if a product is to be marketed in the EU. In addition to the requirements that specifically concern the product, Manufacturers must also comply with other obligations involving documentation and materials management, i.e. the declaration of conformity, the conformity assessment and the information given on the product s rating plate, etc.

EU Regulation 547/2012, which specifically covers water pumps, establishes a minimum efficiency index (MEI) for certain types of water pumps (those belonging to Lot 11 at the moment), a different parameter not to be mistaken with product efficiency.

Application of the directive will permit only products possessing the following specifications to be sold:

• MEI ≥0.10 from January 2013
• MEI ≥0.40 from January 2015

Moreover, the benchmark defined by Regulation 547/2012, i.e. “benchmark reference for the best available technology on the market”, refers to pumps with:

• MEI ≥ 0.70 to 0.80

The new Regulation provides an analytical method for calculating/assessing the MEI of a pump.

All the Caprari interested products already conform to the EU Regulation (Lot 11): “ErP Ready”. Moreover, many of Caprari s products are among those the regulation defines as “reference for the best technology available on the market” since they possess MEI 0.70 to 0.80.

Caprari calls them “Best in Class”.

Consistent with the European directives (most particularly ErP), Caprari has already been promoting and manufacturing high-efficiency motors for some years.

Care for the environment is a very important value for Caprari: it means considering the use of eco-efficient tangible and intangible resources in all phases of the production cycle to be of priority importance. Energy is saved by investing in quality.

Caprari keeps all the phases of its manufacturing activities under strict control. This policy begins with its actual planning philosophy, which has always opted for processes that use the least possible energy, and continues through to choice of the materials used and the manufacturing tools employed.