HYBUILD is a group of 21 partners from 9 countries. Every month, a new HYBUILD partner is introduced in our Blog section. Today: AKG – the cooling experts, manufacturer of the heat exchangers for the project.
AKG in a nutshell
The AKG group of companies – A strong global group of companies
As a leading supplier of customer-oriented solutions, AKG has acquired an internationally acclaimed reputation for producing reliable, high-quality radiators and heat exchangers.
The AKG Verwaltungsgesellschaft (holding company) in Hofgeismar, Germany directs the operation of the AKG Group, whose 2,800 employees produce over 2.5 million heat exchangers in various designs each year. To achieve this, 12 business units in Germany, France, Latvia, Turkey, India, USA, Brazil and China as well as 10 oversea sales companies are in operation twenty-four hours per day.
AKG develops and manufactures high-performance heat exchangers and complete cooling modules for application in construction equipment, compressed air equipment, industrial coolers, agricultural and forestry equipment, railroad vehicles, aviation, household appliances and special applications.
For 100 years AKG Heat-Exchangers are standing for innovative solutions as well as highest engineering and manufacturing competence.
AKG’s role in HYBUILD
AKG builds the aluminium heat exchangers for the HYBUILD-project.
AKG offers a wide range of heat exchanger designs, which includes brazed bar-plate coolers, stacked-shell coolers as well as various types of tube-and-fin heat exchangers.
For compressed air application AKG is not only providing the coolers for oil or compressed air but also evaporators for refrigeration dryers. For one customer AKG already manufactures evaporators with integrated thermal storage (PCM) to improve the performance of the refrigeration system. The similar design principle is used to store thermal energy for the hot and cold storage for the HYBUILD-project. Integrating the PCM directly in the heat exchangers allows a compact and fast reacting storage solution.
Beyond customized solutions for various industries AKG also manufactures special heat exchangers for research institutes to help promote new technologies.
Following are photos of some of the special heat exchangers that AKG has manufactured for use in the HYBUILD-project.
Get in touch: key staff from AKG involved HYBUILD
Dr. Katerina Hatesuer is project manager in the Research and Development department of the AKG group. She obtained her Bc. degree in mechanical engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague (CZ) and her M.Sc. and later the Dr.-Ing. degree at the University in Kassel (D) first in engineering of Regenerative Energy and Energy efficiency (M.Sc.) and followed in Thermal Energy Management (Dr.). She has been joining AKG since August 2018 and is responsible for the thermal dimensioning of the heat exchangers.
Birgo Nitsch is project manager in the Research and Development department of the AKG group. He obtained diploma in Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Dresden. Since 1999 he has been working for AKG in the development of heat exchangers, with a focus on brazed and bonded heat exchangers for various applications (e.g. fuel cells, tumble dryers, heat pumps). He is also responsible for prototype building and the vacuum brazing shop.
Dr. Andreas Strehlow is director of Research and Development of the AKG group. He obtained a degree in chemical engineering and specialized in fluid dynamics at the Technical University of Dortmund. He works in the development of heat exchangers since 1994, where the focus was on large regenerative heat exchangers for power stations. He joined AKG in 2003 and is responsible for developing, building and testing of high performance heat exchangers for the AKG group.