European AMCA Marketing Committee
European AMCA established its own marketing committee, chaired by Renato Zorat, Export Sales Director from Maico Italia S.p.A. The committee’s vice chair is Paul Wenden of Twin City Fan International. The first committee meeting was held in Milan on 27 October 2014, and the second meeting was held in Frankfurt on 11 March 2015. European AMCA members interested in joining the committee can contact Michael Ivanovich at mivanovich@amca.org.
Fan 2015 Conference and White Paper
Fan 2015, an international technical forum for the fan industry, was held 15–17 April 2015, in Lyon, France. Fan 2015 is hosted by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), Centre Technique des Industries Mécaniques (CETIM) and Centre Technique des Industries Aérauliques et Thermiques (CETIAT). It attracted 300 attendees from 17 countries, with authors from every global region presenting 70 technical papers. Chairman of the Fan 2015 Organizing Committee Geoff Sheard published a white paper for AMCA that summarises each of the presentations and technical papers. The white paper also provides a review of the industry’s past, present and future research agenda. This paper is available at no cost on AMCA’s website at www.amca.org/whitepapers.
European Regulations
Regulatory development in the European Union has been exceptionally busy. The following summarizes many of the regulatory actions underway.
Regulation 327/2011, Industrial Fans
The review of the regulation is nearing completion. European AMCA and many of our members are registered as stakeholders. A joint European AMCA/Eurovent/EVIA position paper was sent to the Commission Policy Officer on 14 April 2015. Copies were sent with a cover letter to Member State representatives the next day.
At the consultation forum meeting on 30 April, the Commission reviewed the text of their working document line by line and made the necessary notes to fine-tune the final draft.
The commenting was largely done on the basis of a joint position paper. Many comments seem to have been taken into account. European AMCA has subsequently followed up on the consultation forum by providing the European Commission with more information on industrial and dust-conveying fans and car park jet fans. It also reinforced our previously submitted paper with a follow-up statement. From now on, the progress of the revision follows a set sequence of procedures largely outside of the public domain.
CEN TC 156/WG17
This nearing completion of its work on a harmonised standard. Under a mandate from the European Commission, it is to provide instruction and guidance on compliance with Regulation 327. It will reference other standards, including EN ISO 5801 (Laboratory Testing of Fans) and EN ISO 12759 (Fan Efficiency). A productive meeting was held in Madrid at the beginning of June 2015, and the draft is almost ready for release for comment, subject to the completion of a mandatory annex. At the next meeting, due to be held at end of October, work will resume on finalizing the draft of the former prEN 14461, Fans – Safety Requirements.
Ventilation Units
Following the publication of the Ecodesign Regulation on residential and non-residential ventilation units, a study for the Ventilation Units Product Group has been launched to provide the European Commission with technical assistance on draft transitional methods, frequently asked questions and other technical issues. According to the project plan, two stakeholder meetings are foreseen. At the first stakeholder meeting on 15 June 2015, the overall focus will be on the scope of Regulation 1253/2014 and Delegated Regulation 1254/2014 (Labelling of Residential Ventilation Units), dealing mainly with definitions of unidirectional ventilation units (e.g., roof fans) and on the draft transitional methods to determine the internal specific fan power (SFPint)for non-residential ventilation units. Also, some clarification on articles of the regulation will be given, and questions from stakeholders received so far will be summarized. The draft agenda, discussion document on UVU and explanatory note on SFPint are available on the study website. The “Questions and Answers” document planned is not due until October of 2015. The main topic of the second stakeholder meeting will be this document.
Material Efficiency Under Ecodesign
The European Commission has issued a draft standardization request in regard to requirements on material efficiency aspects under the Ecodesign directive. This document is a revised version of M/529 on material efficiency aspects, which had been rejected at the end of 2014. The commission services intend to have this request and its accompanying implementing decision adopted in the fall, once all the necessary consultations have been completed.
This standardization request will require that CEN and CENELEC to develop harmonized standards to assess the following material efficiency aspects: product lifetime extension, the ability to reuse components or recycle materials from products at end-of-life, the ability to recover energy from products at end-of-life, and the use of reused components and/or recycled materials in products. It also covers other aspects, such as upgrades; the ability to extract key components for reuse, repair, recycling and treatment; calculation of recycled and reused content in products; methods to identify components by, for example, their mean time to failure or environmental impact; reporting formats; and reusability and recoverability indices.
Market Surveillance (Ecopliant)
The final, publishable report from the Ecopliant project is now available. The objective of Ecopliant was to help deliver the intended economic and environmental benefits of the Ecodesign directive and provide a level playing field for businesses. It is expected to achieve this by strengthening market surveillance and so increasing compliance with the Ecodesign directive and relevant implementing measures.
Jet Fan Standard
The revision of EN ISO 13350 has been approved. Some final editorial corrections have been sent to ISO for inclusion in the still-pending publication. Meanwhile, the thrust-based method for the calculation of efficiency – the main focus of the revision – has been included in the draft revision of Regulation 327.
ATEX (Hazardous Area) Fan Standard
At a meeting of the Working Group in Rome on 11 & 12 March 2015, it was decided that a further meeting would be needed to complete the final draft revised in September. Agreement still needs to be reached on safe material pairings and related acceptability criteria for ATEX Category 3 fans. It is intended that Member State mirror groups meet beforehand to agree on their positions.
Emergency Smoke and Heat Control Fan Standard
The revision of EN 12101-3 received a positive vote from a majority of Member States. News of its publication from CEN TC 191 is forthcoming.
The Circular Economy Package
In July 2014, the Commission published its circular economy package, composed of a communication on circular economy and a proposal for the review of waste legislation. In December of 2014, the Commission announced the withdrawal of the package and subsequently declared its new objective: to propose a more ambitious package by the end of 2015. It will focus on concrete measures that will cover the whole value chain, from the extraction of raw materials to recycling. It will contribute to EU objectives, as well, such as the Energy Union, the climate objectives and resource efficiency.
The European Commission has now launched a public consultation on the circular economy. The consultation will run until 20 August, and on 25 June, the Commission will host a conference in Brussels that will feed into the consultation process. For more information, visit their website.
European AMCA 