Key Developments in Germany and Abroad

A Special MWM Moment of Roland Henn

Last year, I celebrated my 25^th anniversary with the company—a fine opportunity to reminisce about past years with all their events and highlights. An especially remarkable aspect was my development work on our large engine series. Of course, this was not a one-man job. I greatly benefited from the active, reliable support of numerous colleagues. The result was impressive: We were able to further develop the TBG 632 V16 from 3,520 kW_e and an efficiency of about 39 percent and 48,000 operating hours until overhaul to the current values.

Back then, everything started with a pure natural gas application of the generator set. The first one went live in Kempen, North Rhine-Westphalia, in summer 1996.

In time, further developments enabled us to offer the generator set for mine gas, coke gas, sewage gas, and landfill gas applications as well. To accommodate our customers’ demands, our sales department always had a lot of requests from the development department. Without this pressure, we would probably not have been able to realize interesting applications such as Italiana Coke, the Krupinski and Pniowek mines in Poland, or the Ämmässuo landfill gas plant near Espoo in Finland as effectively as we did, thereby laying the foundation for further attractive, profitable orders for our company.

During my “active engine series days”, I had the opportunity to get to know numerous plants and customers. I learned a lot, and I gained very interesting insights into the application of our products. For example, I saw how our products become part of a complex overall system. It was as if I was peering into the heart of the plants. Some special highlights that come to my mind include the Munich airport, the EVC2 in Dresden, and various plants in Spain, Turkey, and Indonesia. All these impressions gave me key impulses for the further development of our large engine series.

Today, I am part of a fantastic team that works for the product development behind the scenes. We help developers and designers to further develop our outstanding products and make them even more efficient and powerful, but also more durable and reliable. After 25 years with the company, I am still very proud to be part of the MWM family. It has always been an exhilarating feeling to read news about our company, e.g. about the go-live of the plant on Lake Kivu, Rwanda, with its unusual fuel source or about the sewage gas plant in San Jose, USA.