VTU Services: # Engineering of Green Hydrogen production, storage, distribution and application projects # Simulation, Automation and Digitalization of H2 processes and plants plus Digital Twin # Functional safety, risk assessment, HAZOP # Integration of new facilities into existing buildings or infrastructures ensuring authority compliance, high productivity and efficiency Reference Examples: # Large-scale Green hydrogen production Hydrogen infrastructure: Short & long term storage of Green Hydrogen # Hydrogen infrastructure: Grid connection, fuelling and loading stations # Sector coupling: Electricity, gas, heating, cooling and mobility # Steel industry: Green hydrogen production with electrolyses from renewable energy # Refinery: Replacing the steam reforming H2 production to reduce carbon emissions

With our cross-departmental expertise from automation, electrical engineering, measurement and control technology and process engineering, VTU provides customised automation solutions for your process and manufacturing systems.

By 2050, climate-neutral cement is to be produced in Austria – an important factor in this is process emissions. Alpacem aims to achieve this goal by 2035 with its "Compass to zero CO₂," a three-stage strategy plan. A new, model-based process control at the Alpacem cement plant in Wietersdorf marks a significant advancement. Developed together with VTU, this technology enables CO₂-optimized raw meal production, where up to 50% of natural raw materials are replaced by mineral residues (substitute raw materials/SRM) such as construction waste, biomass ashes, foundry sands, and mill scale. SRMs are by-products from other industries that can serve as substitutes for primary raw materials like limestone and marl. Previous solutions failed due to the complexity of the processes and the specific plant design. Additionally, SRMs often have highly fluctuating chemical compositions and limited availability. The consequences are frequent changes in raw material components and ongoing recipe adjustments. Alpacem found the ideal partners in the VTU Automation & Industrial Data Solutions (IDS) Department team for developing a tailored solution. The new control system integrates residues into raw meal production, consistently focusing on the circular economy. Florian Pöllabauer and Martin Rohrer from VTU, Christine Gröll (Laboratory and Material Flow Management at Alpacem), and Christian Novak (Head of IT/OT at Alpacem) contributed significantly to this success as an expert team, together with VTU project staff Wolfgang Köck, Stefan Pauli, Sebastian Wolf, Wolfgang Reitbauer, Patrick Noack, Simon Weinberger, Alexander Stindl, Christoph Lex, Leonardo Abbate, Christian Mück, Patrik Borkovic, and Markus Lindner. The collaboration was complemented by the Montanuniversität (Technical University) in Leoben, where Christine Gröll developed a quality control concept for cement plants without a blending bed as part of her dissertation. The core of the technology is an optimization algorithm that analyzes and adjusts process and quality data in real-time. This innovative in-house development creates long-term flexibility and efficiency, independent of external systems. The control system successfully went into operation in the summer of 2024. The environmental impacts of the project were recognized with a nomination for the TRIGOS Award in the "Climate Protection" category. Additionally, Christine Gröll received a nomination for the ÖGUT Environmental Award in the "Women in Environmental Technology" category. This pioneering project demonstrates how innovative technologies can combine sustainability and economic efficiency – an important step towards a resource-conserving and climate-friendly future. Due to the great success, the foundation for follow-up projects with Alpacem has been laid: The funding application for "Transformation of Industry" in the form of substitute raw material processing for decarbonization in collaboration with the Grambacher Process Engineering team has already been completed. Other offered projects range from an implemented raw mill control to data analytics and the automated control of a crane system to support substitute raw material processing by VTU.

VTU Services: Engineering of maximum decarbonized processes Simulation, Mass & Energy balances, Automation and Digitalization of decarbonized processes and plants plus Digital Twin Functional safety, risk assessment, HAZOP Authority Engineering & Authority Approval Support Integration of new facilities into existing buildings or infrastructures ensuring authority compliance, high productivity and efficiency Reference Examples: Development of a sustainability strategy and implementation of 3 Mio. € CAPEX project for decarbonisation of a 30 year old pharma plant with 80% energy from renewables (savings in OPEX, water usage, fossil fuel, electrical energy & CO2) Sustainable 30 % API Plant Expansion by green value engineering and implementation of 1,5 Mio. € CAPEX project with improved design and reduced impact but no changes in the process (savings in OPEX, water usage, fossil fuel, electrical energy & CO2) Water savings for 50 years old specialty polymers production plant and implementation of 1,3 Mio. € CAPEX project by reducing groundwater use, reduction of wastewater amount, cost reduction / LCA improvement and resilience against drought (savings in OPEX, water usage, fossil fuel, electrical energy & CO2)

We integrate solutions into your process control systems which proactively inform you in real time about the quality, performance, energy efficiency and status of your production processes and facilities.