Investigation of specific energy consumption of injection moulding machines

Energy efficiency and energy management have never been more important themes than now. Continuous rising of energy prices, increasing awareness of environmental effects of CO2production by industries makes the energy management an important concern. In plastics industry, Injection moldingmachines (IMMs) consume nearly 60% of the energy at a typical injection moulding plant so IMMs are a good target for energy efficiency improvements [1]. If we compare only thetotal energy consumption of IMMs, it is not possible to compare the different machines on a validated basis.Therefore, it makes more sense to use specific energy consumption (SEC) (KWh/kg) as a comparative quantity. Some researchers studied the effects of variable speed drives,variable displacement pumps, power factor of motor onenergy consumption of IMMs [2].Effect of screwdesign and age ofmachine onSEC of different types of IMMs has investigated in other studies [3], [4].In this paper we want to investigate effectof pumps design and occurrence phase of maximum power usage on SEC of hydraulic IMMs