Since the founding of ENDEGS in 2007, the company has a clear mission: They want to see to it that fewer hazardous emissions get into the air. As a family-owned company in Pförring near Ingolstadt, Germany, ENDEGS has developed, patented and marketed leading technologies for safe, clean and sustainable emissions control.
ENDEGS developed the world’s first fully equipped, autonomously operated, trailer-mounted vapour combustion unit, making mobile emissions treatment possible for the first time ever.
The company is expert for mobile emissions treatment of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint. They guarantee compliance with safety regulations to ensure the safety of people and property. As an experienced partner we accompany our clients through the entire emission control process.
ENDEGS has been awarded the TOP 100 seal 2021 and have thus been selected as one of the 100 most innovative companies in the German SME sector. 120 test criteria were used to measure topics such as innovation-promoting top management, innovation climate, innovative processes, open innovation, and innovation success.
Interview with Kai Sievers, CEO ENDEGS Group.
E.E: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Kai Sievers: From hydrocarbons to solvents to hydrogen-containing vapors: Today, ENDEGS is the only company in Europe operating portable combustion units that burn all kinds of gases, gas compounds and vapors of the hazard groups IIA, IIB and, more recently, IIC (products like hydrogen). We guarantee a combustion rate of 100 percent and no open flame. The performance of our ENDEGS VCU is scalable from 0.1 to 50 MW, with units available in 5, 10 or 20 MW capacity.
For over 15 years we have been degassing on SEVESO sites all types of tanks, containers, wagons, tankers, pipelines and columns, so that they can be reused, loaded or unloaded or as replacement for VRU, VPS or flares.
E.E: What are the news about new products?
K.S: In 2021, ENDEGS has developed a unit especially for the needs of the chemical industry that has a combustion capacity scalable from 0,1 to 20 MW instead of the previous 5 and 10 MW. This means that even pure gases can be burned with an extremely high efficiency. Due to their compactness, the fast docking and the short execution process, our mobile vapor combustion systems are space saving, easily adaptable and particularly cost-efficient.
This is also evident in real tests, such as the recent mobile gasoline degassing of an inland tanker in the port of Rotterdam (the aim was both to test the safety of the installation and to measure emissions). The result was, that we were 40 percent faster than others. Thereby the tankers berthing time was reduced by 40 percent, which means extremely reduced costs. Furthermore, the company had a factor of 20 fewer emissions than the competition which means a high destruction efficiency of almost 100 percent.
Recently, ENDEGS has also developed systems that use heating oil instead of gas for auxiliary firing. That means degassing can be performed in places where gas cannot be used.
Motivated by the desire to minimize the health risk to cleaning workers, we took a completely new step in 2021. We started renting out ATEX Zone 0 robots (ESOT system) for the remote-controlled cleaning of storage tanks and pits in the chemical, petrochemical, automotive, food and other industries. What makes this so important? Everywhere where people previously had to do the work at great risk, under rigorous safety precautions and wearing gas masks and hazmat suits, now a remote-controlled robot does it.
Kai Sievers
E.E: What are the range of products?
K.S: We accompany our customers through the entire degassing process and adapt to their individual requirements. In this way we help companies prepare for downtime and maintenance and prevent disruption in the operations. Our emissions treatment technologies have been used over years – mainly for tank and pipe degassing, VRU replacement and loading application. Some of them last up to three years and involve the degassing of hundreds of liquid gas tankers or sea vessels.
So, whether complete service or individual equipment rental – we provide a customized solution for every challenge.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends
K.S: We operate in many different industries. The topics of climate neutrality and employee safety are becoming increasingly important. By 2050, Europe is to become climate-neutral – in other words, no more greenhouse gases are to be released into the atmosphere that are not otherwise compensated. As the European Environment Agency states, the EU is on a good path: it markedly surpassed its 2020 emissions reduction target of 20 %. Our solutions are therefore in exactly the right place to make an important contribution to this.
In this context, ship degassing is also becoming increasingly important.
More and more customers are taking advantage of our ship degassing services. We’re delighted about this. It’s not just good news for us, it also means more safety for ship crews and other involved parties and makes an important contribution to environmental protection. For example, our company cooperates with the Port of Duisburg to create the first legal option for the environment-friendly degassing and removal of washing water from inland barges.
In order to be able to degas liquid and gas and chemical tankers on the Rhine in Germany, we brought forward suggestions for amendments to regulations in the AND (European Agreement concerning the international carriage of dangerous goods by inland waters) and in bodies like the CDNI (Convention on the Collection, Discharge and Acceptance of Waste in Rhine and Inland Navigation).
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
K.S: Our technologies give industry a way to noticeably destroy VOC emissions. So that more and more industries and thus all of us can benefit from this, ENDEGS is constantly researching, developing and extending the applications of its technologies. For example, we made it possible to incinerate even ammonia. Why the “even”? Because ammonia is a real challenge. It doesn’t burn evenly, but in bursts and explosively. But our highly smart combustion process can easily deal with these characteristics so that in their degassing systems ammonia burns with extremely low emissions and almost residue-free. Today we’re in demand worldwide for degassing ammonia tanks.
We steadily develop our mobile plug and play vapor combustor, which gives us another unique capability. It allows us to degas substances that tend to polymerise, without smoke or flame and without polymerisation.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
K.S: In the coming years, we want to continue to help reduce harmful emissions into our air, especially to further reduce hazardous emissions in industrial maintenance. In this course we also want to prevent the creation of hazardous waste (which is not possible with other currently available technologies) and reduce the amount of chemicals used.
We want to protect workers involved in the degassing process to the greatest possible degree. Since we never stand still, we aim to find new applications where treatment of emissions was not formerly used, and where gases and vapours are released into the atmosphere.
Our technologies are greatly appreciated internationally. Customers let us know that they perceive us as unique. So, we decided to present our advanced plug and play technology in the GCC States in Abu Dhabi, Riad and Dammam in 2022.