Achieving Sustainable Energy Reduction in an Industrial Setting

Kit Oung Energy Consultant and Deputy to Director for Finance and Human Resources Projective Ltd, Projective House, 3 Ancells Court, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 2UY Tel: +44 (0)1252 360 400 Fax: +44 (0)1252 626 867 E-mail: kit.oung@projectiveltd.co.uk

Introduction
With a high visibility of environmental sustainability and low carbon economy in the political, media, and social media, achieving a low footprint is an important issue for businesses. For many businesses, energy consumption forms the largest part of the carbon footprint. Energy efficiency is an easy and low-cost means to reduce energy consumption. Apart from environmental protection causes, either due to regulatory compliance or corporate social responsibility, energy efficiency has a direct link with business profitability, and competitiveness in the future. Some firms implement energy efficiency initiatives on an adhoc basis. Some firms rely on one or two employees orchestrating and facilitating energy savings in the company without embedding energy efficient behaviours. Other firms choose add technology without consideration of their daily operations and personnel.

ISO50001 Energy Management System

An extensive research by McKinsey and Company showed that up to 25% of energy consumption can be saved with relatively little or no cost and without significant changes in lifestyles and business practices. Successful implementation of ISO50001 will support firms to identify these opportunities. ISO50001, an energy management system, is an internationally recognised and integrated set of processes and tools to develop a holistic energy reduction strategy, translate the strategies into daily operational actions, monitor and continually improve on the firms effectiveness. Figure 1 shows the components of ISO50001 and its interrelationships. There are eight features within ISO50001 which are key drivers to ensure the sustainability of an energy reduction programme. It brings together the technological and people-based techniques. These are: 1. Use consistent language; 2. Allocate responsibilities and resources early; 3. Involve the whole company; 4. Challenge established assumptions; 5. Integrate into daily operations;

6. Utilise appropriate performance measurement; 7. Integrate into whole life cycle; and 8. Continual improvement. Although ISO50001 is newly launched, its adoption by firms around the globe is likely to grow exponentially in similar fashion to that of ISO9001 and ISO14001. This is shown in Figure 2. The following are four industrial examples drawing out significant energy savings by using various key features contained in ISO50001.

Case 1: Hidden Savings from Replacing Steam Ejectors

A manufacturing plant generated vacuum by using steam ejectors. Vacuum is used to extract remaining moisture from the upstream processes before further processed into the final product. The steam ejectors use approximately 4.2 million kWh to generate vacuum costing 83k per annum. A mechanical vacuum pump can be used to generate similar vacuum requirement. For the same vacuum requirements, the mechanical pump consumed 230k kWh with an electricity cost of 11k per annum. With a savings of 72k and a capital cost of 360k, this opportunity has an investment of 5 years. This is outside the investment criteria for the plant. Detailed investigation by the Energy Manager and the Production department, Maintenance department and the Sales department indicated that there are additional savings that could be made from changing the steam ejectors to a mechanical variant. The steam ejectors uses saturated steam and are subject to erosion. Minor fluctuation of steam pressure in the distribution causes a drop of vacuum, which in turn generates defective production. Additional savings comes from (1) raw material savings, (2) avoided waste processing, (3) avoided annual cost to replace steam ejectors and associated parts. The additional and frequently hidden savings were quantified and reduce the simple payback to less than 4 years and meet the investment criteria for the plant.

Case 2: Options to Reduce Pumping Energy

Purified water in a pharmaceutical plant is distributed in a close-pipe work through various end users and back to a storage tank. The distribution is achieved via a variable speed driven pump operated at 50 Hz. When there is no use for purified water, the calculated velocity of the water distribution is 7.50 m/s giving rise to a Reynolds Number (measure of turbulence) of 176k. A survey was carried out and found water is only required by the end users for 2 hrs/day and at a rate of 25% of the rated flow of the pump. The operations team believed that the regulatory requirement for the return leg of the pipe work has to be maintained above 1 m/s. Upon checking the actual text, the regulation only specifies for the return leg to be turbulent. If the plant decides to keep the existing velocity, remove the existing variable speed drive giving an energy savings coming from elimination of the VSD with an equivalent of 3% of the pump motor power.

When there is no water demand, the pumping requirement is 5% of the rated capacity. When there is water demand, the pumping requirements is 30% of the rated capacity. An alternative and higher energy saving option, achieving to reduce up to 95% of the flow is by using a suitably sized 2-speed pump or a suitably sized variable speed driven pump.

Case 3: Individual Equipment vs. Site Wide Energy Saving Opportunity

A malted drink manufacturer generates steam using natural gas. The boiler does not have an economiser and have a gross efficiency of 80%.One proposal is to install an economiser generating a natural gas reduction of 5%. The first process, where 30% of the site steam is consumed, wheat produced is mashed together in low temperature hot water to form a broth. Hot water is generated from a steam heat exchanger. The steam is distributed via a 3 mile long distribution before reaching the mashing area. A simplified energy balance shows that the mashing area needs 528 kW of thermal energy. Inefficiencies in the heat exchanger, energy losses in the distribution and inefficiencies in the boiler means that an equivalent of 872 kW needs to be purchased to supply the mash area, giving a natural gas reduction of 344kW or 12%. A budgetary cost of 75k and a new hot water system of 141k, the simple paybacks for both projects are 4 yrs and 3.2 years respectively. In addition, discussions with the operations and maintenance department revealed additional benefits from reduced temperature of the mash area, reduced need for heat exchanger cleaning due to scaling every 2 weeks, increased in availability for production leading to increased sales.

Case 4: Reviewing Energy Requirements after Change of Use

A large room were converted from a hazardous manufacturing space into an office space. Before the conversion, fresh air was supplied using a full fresh air supply and extract. Due to the hazardous vapours, the HVAC supplies and extracts are with an air change rate of 12. The HVAC fans consumed 52 kW of electricity costing 33k per annum. The office conversion project utilises the same HVAC systems without considering the fresh air requirements for the new office. Several years later, realising that the office HVAC is only required for 12 hours per day, instead of 24 hours, the energy manager installed a timed switch to turn off the HVAC during night time. The energy saved was equivalent to 228k kWh/yr and is equivalent to 16.5k/yr. When the energy manager check the legal requirement for fresh air per occupant, it was discovered that the fresh air per person is 8 L/s an that the existing office HAV far exceeds this requirements. Installing a suitably sized and commission variable speed drives to control the HVAC fans resulted in an additional 220k kWh/yr savings (16k/yr).

Conclusion

As the four case studies have demonstrated managing energy and maximising the quantum of energy saved required a mix of the eight important management techniques making up ISO50001. A management system is an essential part of business operation it links strategy and operations. ISO50001 is a recognised Management Systems and is developed specifically for the purpose of supporting a business to manage and reduce energy consumption. A successful and sustainable energy reduction programme requires interplay between many departments and personnel within a firm. The final outcome of energy reduction is a balance between the risk and reward and requires a close discussion and cooperation between many departments within the business.

Figures
Stage 1
Develop the Energy Strategy

Stage 6
Test and Adapt the Strategy
Energy Management Plan

Stage 2
Translate the Energy Strategy

Stage 5
Monitor and Learn

Energy Measurement Plan

Stage 3
Plan Operations

Stage 4
Execute Processes and Initiatives

Figure 1: Elements of ISO50001.

ISO9001 (1987) 1,200,000

ISO14001 (1996)

ISO50001 (2011)

1,000,000

800,000
Global Standards Adoption

600,000

400,000

200,000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Years Since Inception

Figure 2: Global Adoption of ISO9001 and ISO14001.

Heat Exchanger Inefficiencies Steam Distribution Inefficiencies

Boiler Inefficiencies

End Use

Heat Exchanger

Boiler Output

Natural Gas Input

528 kW

550 kW

612 kW

872 kW

344 kW

Figure 3: Simplified Energy Flows in a Malted Drink Manufacturing.