UNITI Conference Report 2017 Living with the constant of change
This year’s UNITI Conference was the biggest ever. Attracting over 600 delegates from across Europe and beyond, the event has proven itself to be the centrepiece of fuels and lubricants technology events in mainland Europe.
The key theme of this year’s event could well have been about disruptive technologies. The advent of technological change impacts economic fundamentals across many different industries. The lubricants industry is no exception, having learnt to live with the constant flux of change since its inception. The changes which lie ahead are no less great than those that have gone before.
A pre-event seminar on Sustainable Mobility impacting future Fuels & Lubricants was held the evening before the main conference began. Hosted by Neste, the seminar was well attended and brought together leading academics, lubricants experts and industry leaders in an engaging and thought- provoking event which set the scene for the main conference. I particularly enjoyed the presentation given by Nils Nylund, Research Professor of VTT on the subject of vehicle and fuel trends. Nynas also hosted their own pre-event Industry Forum.
Edwin Leber, Managing Director of UNITI opened the formal proceedings on the day of the Congress and welcomed delegates. The day’s sponsor was Puraglobe and Dr. Sönke Möhr, Director of Global Sales, Marketing and Communications gave a short introductory speech. He was followed by Immo Kosel UNITI Board member and Rowe representative.
The first presentation of the morning was given by Michael Fischer from Honda on the subject of ‘Innovative Powertrains for a sustainable mobility“. Dr Fischer’s presentation centred on the use of increasingly sophisticated technology to drive improvements in powertrain design aligned to the changing regulatory landscape for emission reduction, CO2 decreases and further vehicle electrification.
Whereas Honda talked about their plans for two-thirds of vehicles to be zero emission or electric by 2030, the second speaker from Shell Deutschland Dr Jorg Adolf, talked about the importance of commercial vehicles to Europe’s economy today. In Germany alone there are 35 million trucks representing Europe’s fifth largest fleet behind those of France, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. By 2040 trucks will still account for 50% of all freight movements and the challenges of meeting future Euro emission controls with increasing fleet sizes will become very apparent.
After the networking break sponsored by FRIEDRICH SCHARR KG, VW’s Thomas Garbe gave a presentation from the OEM’s perspective on future fuels. Professor Garbe spoke about the increased mobility of the world’s population from a time when people moved perhaps a few metres a day. Industrial changes have led to increases in population movements and the necessity to find work in factories further afield. He was followed by John Bennett from Afton Chemical who spoke about the effects of deposit control and removal on gasoline direct injection engines which have been around since the early 2000s. Deposits cause customer dissatisfaction he stated, emission issues and potential warranty problems. The use of additives can help to keep engines clean and change as temperatures increase.
46 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.139 JUNE 2017
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