A Proposed Systematic Method for Identifying and Characterizing Energy Management Opportunities in Manufacturing Facilities

The focus of this paper is the systematic identification of potential energy management projects in the industrial manufacturing setting. Most manufacturing facilities tend to aggregate the energy usage of the various internal processes into a single utility meter. This leads to a lack of understanding of the role of the individual process contributions to energy costs for the final product. Further, the current methods of selecting sub-processes for energy improvement processes tend to be ad hoc, or experience based. Most energy improvement software either begins with the notion that the particular processes to be improved have already been identified or that some form of a priori domain knowledge is needed to identify these processes. This paper describes a tool that gives the plant manager an understanding of the energy use of individual processes at a systems level and uses a more quantitative means for the identification of candidate energy improvement projects. The method suggested uses a combination of an exergy (second law) based analysis and energy value stream mapping to visualize the entire plant process. The sub-processes with potential for energy conservation are highlighted and may be ranked or otherwise selected by the engineer and management for action.