The German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU) is awarding this year’s German Environmental Prize to the management duo of steel galvanizing company ZINQ in Gelsenkirchen.
The receivers are Lars Baumgürtel and engineer Dr Birgitt Bendiek, who head the research and development department at the Gelsenkirchen site, known as ZINQ Futurium, Kallanish notes.
The circular economy practices established at ZINQ include heat recovery, optimised control technology, green electricity, special alloys with minimised resource use, and efficient zinc bath management. According to Baumgürtel, the company has saved approximately 285,000 tonnes of CO2 since 2010.
“The microzinc process is remarkable: classic galvanisation of steel has a coating layer of 80 to 100 micrometres, or µ for short.” 1µ is one thousandth of a millimetre. “With microzinc, we reduce the coating layer to just 10µ.” This is one tenth of a hair strand thickness. The zinc-aluminium alloy in the microzinc bath makes it possible to lower the usual melting point from 450 to 420 degrees Centigrade.
ZINQ has 50 sites in several European countries, with 2,000 employees, processing 550,000 tonnes/year of steel. “To achieve this, we use almost 30,000 tonnes of zinc per year across the entire ZINQ Group,” says Bendiek.
According to the foundation, the prize, worth a total of €500,000 ($589,000), is one of the most highly endowed environmental awards in Europe.
Christian Koehl Germany
