Lower-emission concrete production with the same product quality

Concrete, one of the most important building materials, has an enormous carbon footprint. Each tonne of cement, the binding agent in concrete, produces 587 kg of CO₂ equivalent. Every year, 27.5 million tonnes of cement are consumed in Germany and around 4.65 billion tonnes worldwide.

The WirelessAccel project aims to reduce CO₂ emissions in concrete production without compromising product quality. The goal is to develop a system that facilitates the use of more environmentally friendly building materials, such as recycled materials and reduced amounts of cement. Monitoring the manufacturing process is intended to reduce waste and thereby decrease CO₂ emissions. 

System detects vibrations in concrete block manufacturing machine

IMMS will therefore develop a wireless measurement system for recording vibrations throughout the entire vibration system of a concrete block machine. This system should be capable of accurately recording the complex and highly dynamic vibrations that occur during the compaction process in real time, thereby enabling precise monitoring and adjustment of production parameters. This is particularly important for low-cement concrete mixes or recycled materials.

Time-synchronous and energy-efficient data acquisition

To this end, IMMS is researching methods for the precise time synchronisation of up to 12 wireless sensor nodes. This enables synchronous measurement at different locations on the concrete block machine. At the same time, an energy-efficient data transmission protocol is being implemented that reliably transmits the recorded acceleration data to a central gateway in real time at a sampling rate of 2 kHz and a measuring range of up to 500g. The sensor nodes are designed to withstand extremely high accelerations while operating with minimal energy consumption, creating a robust, durable measurement infrastructure for this demanding manufacturing process.