With a gala event at the Palais Liechtenstein in Vienna, 200 guests celebrated the TRIGOS, Austria’s most important award for sustainability and corporate responsibility. The award, which was presented for the 21st time this year, has received a total of 2,900 submissions and 300 winners to date, providing strong evidence of innovation and effectiveness in terms of sustainability. In 2024, 19 companies were nominated from 165 submissions.
VTU was nominated in the “Climate Protection” category with the project “Transformation to Sustainable Production through Model-Based Control and Real-Time Recipe Optimization,” which an interdisciplinary VTU team from the fields of Process Engineering, Automation, Industrial Data Solutions, and Data Analytics implemented for Alpacem.
With the control software developed in the project, it was possible to reduce process-related CO2 emissions by up to 30% during regular plant operation (i.e., during the industrial trial), which corresponds to approximately 70,000 tons. In Austria, one ton of CO2 costs 45 euros in 2024 (and is expected to rise to 55 euros by 2025), which means financial savings of around 3.2 million euros. Additionally, 50% of substitute raw materials such as concrete residues could also be saved. The payback period is less than one year.
A user-friendly web portal enables real-time monitoring and control of the processes, significantly improving the efficiency and sustainability of production. This leads to both cost reductions and significant emission reductions.
In an industry that traditionally has very high emissions (cement accounts for about 8% of global CO2 emissions), this project is a significant advancement. It combines innovative process control concepts and recipe optimization to improve process control and ensure the quality of the final product. VTU impressively demonstrates how targeted measures in the process industry can make significant contributions to climate protection. The developed methods are transferable to other industries and show how sustainable production can be implemented through intelligent systems. In this way, VTU actively supports the achievement of the EU taxonomy environmental goals, particularly in the areas of climate protection and circular economy.
Herbert Andert from VTU and Christine Gröll from Alpacem were present at the gala and accepted the nomination certificate.
TRIGOS is supported by a consortium including the Federation of Austrian Industries, the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, Caritas, the Austrian Red Cross, the respACT Austrian business council for sustainable development, and the Environmental Umbrella Organization.
Congratulations to the project team!