Kelvion PHE
| Kelvion PHE
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|---|---|
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| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | April 18, 1995 |
| Seat | Sarstedt |
| Number of employees | 330 (2007) |
| sales | around € 100 million (2007) |
| Branch | mechanical engineering |
| Website | www.kelvion.com |
Kelvion PHE (formerly GEA Ecoflex ) based in Sarstedt develops and produces sealed and fully welded plate heat exchangers (PHE) for industrial use. The company was founded by Eduard Ahlborn in 1856 and invented the first plate heat exchanger for milk pasteurization in 1931 . Kelvion PHE is one of the world's leading manufacturers of plate heat exchangers for air conditioning , heavy industry, refrigeration , sugar , chemicals , textiles , paper / pulp , the food industry , pharmaceuticals , marine and energy.
history
Kommerzienrat Eduard Ahlborn (1823–1899) founded the company in Hildesheim in 1856 as an agricultural machinery dealer. Ahlborn started building dairy machines in 1875. A number of innovations come from Ahlborn:
- 1899: Carbon dioxide compressors in vertical and horizontal design
- 1922: Use of ammonia compressors
- 1928: "AHLBORN milk heater in plate construction", pioneering achievement in the field of plate heat exchanger technology
- 1933: first automatic cooling system for cooling milk
In addition to Bergedorfer Eisenwerk AG and the Gebrüder Bayer company from Augsburg, Ahlborn was one of the three companies that offered dairy machines with cooling.
The plant was destroyed in the air raids on Hildesheim during the Second World War . After the reconstruction, Ahlborn developed into a leading company in the capital goods industry for dairies , breweries and the food and beverage industry. The vertical range of manufacture grew up to complete systems. Ahlborn built refrigeration systems , buttermaking machines, fermentation pressure tanks, evaporators , pumps and plate heat exchangers and developed its own measuring and control units for process automation in food processing.
The development of plate heat exchangers
From the mid-1950s, as a result of the legal requirements for milk pasteurization, the company increasingly focused on the further development of sealed plate heat exchangers. The original single-flow device was followed by the first free-flow device in 1957.
Due to the design principle, the Freiströmer could not only be used for dairy products, but also for viscous and solids-containing products. Fruit juices or egg products can be tempered without blocking. In 1971 the first industrial equipment for the chemical industry, steelworks and power plant construction was delivered. The first Varitherm device followed in 1977, with which the range of applications for plate heat exchangers was significantly expanded, especially for cooling ship engines with seawater and in the area of central building technology.
owner
In 1979 the GEA Group from Bochum took over the company and renamed it GEA Ahlborn GmbH & Co. KG. GEA discontinued unprofitable business areas such as tank and pump construction. As a result of further acquisitions, the GEA Group restructured the entire group in the mid-1990s. This also led to restructuring at GEA Ahlborn. GEA Ecoflex GmbH was founded on April 18, 1995 and plate heat exchanger production was outsourced there. The company settled in Sarstedt. Today, in addition to the sealed plate heat exchangers, fully welded plate heat exchangers are manufactured in a new 4,800 m 2 hall at the Sarstedt site .
In 2014, the GEA Group parted with the heat exchanger business and sold it to the financial investor Triton. As a holding company initially functioned HX Holding GmbH , headquartered in Bochum, which since November 2015 Kelvion Holding GmbH , all companies of the former business under the new brand Kelvion united. The Sarstedt location has been operating under the name Kelvion PHE GmbH since November 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Metallzeitung, IG Metall Hildesheim, issue 1/2008
- ↑ Press release from GEA Ecoflex GmbH of December 5, 2007
- ↑ Historischer Kälte- und Klimatechnik e. V. (PDF; 256 kB)
- ^ Hans-Liudger Dienel: Die Linde AG: history of a technology group, 1879-2004, 2004, ISBN 3406514847 , page 101, online
- ↑ Tobias Hüser: Gea Heat Exchangers becomes Kelvion. In: http://www.process.vogel.de . PROCESS, November 11, 2015, accessed July 15, 2016 .
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 13.6 " N , 9 ° 51 ′ 43.3" E