Deep in the West… – where the hearts of football fans beat at the weekend „auf Schalke“ (Gelsenkirchen) or in the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund, where „malochen“ (typical Western German word for „to work“) and „auf Schicht“ (at work) have found their way into the dictionary of the Potts, in the middle of this metropolis of 17 million people, we stand and wait. June 2023, 7 o’clock in the morning in Herne. We stand and wait… – wait for what? Well, this assignment is a little different, so we have to fire up the time machine and look back.

On a grey November day in 2021, we received a call from the Herne power plant. „We’ve inherited a room with sera technology,“ was how the person on the other end of the line described the overall situation. „We would like to ask you to carry out an inventory in our building“. This call was the starting signal for a project „to upgrade the hydrochloric acid and caustic soda dosing stations“ in Herne. The inventory was devastating. The consequences of decisions and non-decisions had led to a maintenance and repair backlog, meaning that the systems could no longer be repaired economically. Based on the old system, we drew up a concept proposal for the replacement of the dosing stations and their integration into the old periphery.

More extensive than initially assumed
What quickly gained momentum in the second Corona winter developed into a tough, protracted process. Discussions were sought again and again, and the scope of the overall project kept growing. It was no longer just a matter of replacing two dosing systems of equal value. Suddenly we were also talking about two 15 m³ caustic soda tanks and a control cabinet. All of this was suddenly part of sera ProDos GmbH’s scope of delivery. Challenging, but no problem for us. Service, design, sales and production worked together to realise the project for our customer.

Back to this beautiful summer’s day in June 2023
But why are we waiting instead of continuing to work on our project? Quite simply: international division of labour. Although the dosing system was designed by sera in Germany in the application technology department and also drawn in Immenhausen, it was built by our colleagues at the Spanish sera branch in Alicante. The Spanish colleagues handed over the baton to us punctually at 7:30 a.m., the haulier with the system from Spain drove onto the factory premises and we were able to unload the dosing system. For completion, we had already carried out all the optimisations on the suction side the previous week; many parts had already been prefabricated in the sera service workshop so that the finished components could be inserted into the system within a few hours. From emptying the system under full protection to dismantling, new pipework on the pressure and suction side, electrical cabling, functional tests, electrical testing and the first acid delivery, a total of just three weeks was required. At times, five seranians were working simultaneously to keep to the schedule.

sera has successfully overcome the hurdles and changing requirements. The initial business relationship has developed into a trusting partnership and we are pleased to be able to make a contribution to grid stability and power supply in Germany. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved at sera and on the customer side who contributed to this successful project.