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Guichon Valves: a rewarded environmentally-friendly strategy
Guichon Valves totally redesigned one of its petrochemical valves. This action involved an ecodesign based on Cetim’s Atep software and resulted in significant environmental improvements and economic benefits.
In addition to being a specialist in the manufacturing of high performance and custom-made valves, Guichon Valves has also decided to anticipate the demand for more environmentally-friendly products. Romain Favre, head of the Design Office, explains: “Further to a training session on ecodesign organised by Cetim, we initiated an ecodesign project and we redesigned one of our flagship products, i.e. a stainless steel gate valve used in the petrochemical industry.” Guichon Valves wished to reinforce its position as an environmentally responsible industrial manufacturer and assess the potential benefits brought by such an action in terms of manufacturing and cost, without however reducing the performance of the valve.
Significant benefits
For this operation carried out within the scope of the “Ecodesign 2012-2014” collective programme implemented within the “Plan PME Rhône-Alpes” regional scheme, Guichon Valves received assistance from an environmental consultant and used Cetim’s Atep ecodesign tool: a user-friendly freeware which makes it easier to identify environmental priorities quickly during the product development stage. “By redesigning the valve from scratch, we were able to find several possibilities of improvement such as the use of recycled materials, the integration of engineered plastic materials, the choice of another manufacturing process, etc.” A lifecycle analysis also allowed Guichon Valves to assess the environmental balances of the original and the ecodesigned products. The benefits are significant: impact indicators concerning climate change, marine eutrophication and ground-level ozone generation reduced by more than 40 % for the redesigned valve, number of components reduced by 20 %, a valve 30 % lighter, dead volumes reduced by 30 % and a manufacturing time twice as short.
Consult the full “References” sheet on the Cetim.fr Website, “Prestations” (services), “References” space.
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