On the final day of the Parts2clean 2022 trade show, Dr. Michael Flämmich, chairman of the board of the Association for Industrial Parts Cleaning (FiT), presented the FiT2clean Award 2022, which comes with a prize of 10,000 euros. Prior to that, the three finalists presented their innovations at the FiT booth.
The first-place winner of the 2022 FiT2Clean Award is the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) in Stuttgart. The jury was impressed by the innovative idea of using the flammable gas butane as a cleaning medium for an energy-efficient parts cleaning process and completely residue-free drying, as well as the sustainable side effect that the cold released during vaporization can also be used to cool other processes or environments.
Ecoclean GmbH took second place for its newly developed Acoustic Performance Measurement (APM) system. In this system, a special microphone monitors ultrasonic power, frequency, and temperature during the cleaning process, allowing deviations to be evaluated and documented. Third place went to Acp Systems AG for a newly developed nozzle that generates a pulsating jet for the established CO2 snow jet process. This produces significantly higher kinetic energy, resulting in an optimized cleaning effect. The winner of the FiT2clean Award receives 10,000 euros plus one year of free membership in the Fachverband industrielle Teilereinigung e.V. (Association for Industrial Parts Cleaning). According to FiT, there will be another FiT2clean Award at parts2clean 2023 next year.