Preface

This is an exciting time to be involved in industrial energy management. While the oil crisis of the 1970s precipitated a knee-jerk reaction from industry to cut dependence on foreign oil, the trend over the past 20 years has been toward a more considered and systematic approach to energy efficiency. Many companies, especially the larger ones, have developed comprehensive programs that include corporate energy policies, reporting systems, benchmarking, various types of energy audits, and integration of energy efficiency elements into engineering procedures and purchasing protocols. ExxonMobil, for example, started its Global Energy Management System (GEMS) in 2000. By 2009 the company reported that the program had identified savings opportunities of between 15 and 20% at its manufacturing sites, and had captured over 60% of these savings [1]. Many other companies are working on energy efficiency initiatives, and numerous software and consulting organizations provide support for the various aspects of energy efficiency and energy management.

It is not only industry that has taken an interest in this area. In the United States, both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency have been active in developing and promoting energy efficiency practices. Meanwhile, the International Organization for Standardization launched ISO 50001:2011 in 2011 to "support organizations in all sectors to use energy more efficiently, through the development of an energy management system (EnMS)" [2].

The Laws of Industrial Energy Efficiency

For 30 years I have been active in industrial energy management in various forms. Over that time a couple of general principles have become apparent to me, and they are so powerful that I venture to call them "the laws of industrial energy management."

1. Law 1: There is no silver bullet-no single method or technology that ensures that energy use will be optimized. Those of us with a background in engineering tend to think in terms of technological options to improve energy performance-better heat recovery, more selective catalysts, higher efficiency motors, and fundamentally better process design-and indeed these are very powerful ways of lowering energy usage. However, real-world energy efficiency is also a function of the behavior of both individuals and organizations. It follows that management and motivation are also critical factors, and they require very different types of expertise than solutions that are purely technological.
2. Law 2: I don't know it all-and neither do you. I am constantly amazed at the breadth and depth of my own ignorance. For many years, I have specialized in heat integration using pinch analysis, and I would like to think I have become quite good at it-yet still every project brings surprises. Energy management is a multidisciplinary activity, and over the past 30 years I have been privileged to work alongside people with expertise in a great variety of energy-related fields. I have learned a lot from them, and I have greatly expanded my own expertise. However, there are still many areas where I know virtually nothing. It takes a long time to become truly proficient in any given field, and life is a constant learning process.

These two laws are at the root of the structure of this book and the approach we have taken in writing it. The book consists of two main sections-one focusing on management and organizational issues, and the other on technology. I have spent most of my career as a freewheeling consultant specializing in the technical aspects of energy efficiency. It was very clear that the book also needed the perspective of a corporate insider with experience in managing an energy program in a large company. I was delighted that Beth Jones, who until recently filled that role at LyondellBasell, agreed to be my coauthor. Both of us then set about writing and also recruiting other leading program managers and technical specialists-mostly people who have worked with us in the past in various energy management activities-with the expertise needed to cover the major facets of contemporary energy management in the process industries.

Energy and the Process Industries

To many people the term "process industries" is synonymous with continuous, large-scale, petroleum and petrochemical processing-and indeed these types of operations are well represented in this book. However, the Institute of Industrial Engineers defines the process industries much more broadly as "those industries where the primary production processes are either continuous, or occur on a batch of materials that is indistinguishable" [3]. This includes not just oil refining and petrochemicals, but also a wide range of other sectors such as food and beverages, inorganic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, base metals, plastics, rubber, wood and wood products, paper and paper products, textiles, and many others.

Within the wide range of sectors in the process industries, there is a great diversity of operations. World-scale refineries and petrochemical facilities have annual energy bills in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, and energy is a major component of variable cost. In contrast, raw materials and labor tend to be much more dominant in many of the smaller, more specialized facilities, where annual energy bills can be on the order of a million dollars or less.

In many of the smaller facilities, lighting and space heating and cooling are often the dominant energy users. These are just a tiny percentage of the cost at large petrochemical sites, where the dominant energy users are associated with moving, transforming, and separating feed and product materials.

Energy management is also very different for batch processes than it is for continuous ones. In particular, where many batch operators can apply "downtime shutdown strategies" to eliminate unneeded energy use for much of the time and thus gain "free" energy savings, this approach is not generally applicable in continuous processing.

There are also both similarities and differences in the equipment and systems across the process sector. Steam systems are virtually ubiquitous, and so are electric motors, heat exchangers, pumps, and compressors. However, beyond these few common elements there is a great diversity, from distillation columns, catalytic reactors, and centrifuges to cookers, toasters, and belt dryers. Each system and each type of equipment has its own issues that need to be considered within a comprehensive energy management program.

Our Scope

Our goal in this book is to provide a concise overview of energy management principles and techniques for the process industries. This necessarily means that we cannot cover every possible process type or piece of equipment, but we have tried to provide the basics that are needed by most energy managers and technical specialists.

Irrespective of the size of the energy bill, the continuous or batch nature of the processes, or the types of equipment employed, energy efficiency is a must. Understandably, though, management gives the greatest amount of attention to the largest costs. The basic principles of energy management and energy efficiency are universal, but different types of facilities require different types of energy management programs.

Within the pages of this book, we have tried to capture both the common threads and the diversity. The book consists of two main parts:

1. Section 1 focuses on energy management principles and systems. This includes an exploration of the role of the energy manager, examples of successful corporate energy management programs from diverse companies, and also benchmarking and management systems.
2. Section 2 looks at the technologies of energy efficiency. It covers some of the most widely used types of equipment, utility systems, and process-wide approaches for improving energy efficiency.

There is one very important area that we have not covered in any great depth. Breakthrough technologies-new equipment or processes that radically improve efficiency-do appear periodically, and they can lead to drastic reductions in energy use. For example, the development of the low-pressure polyethylene process in the 1950s was a major technological advance over the older high-pressure process, and it uses much less energy per unit of production. A more familiar example for most people outside of the polymer industry is the rise in recent years of compact fluorescent lights and light-emitting diodes, which provide dramatic energy savings compared with the familiar incandescent bulbs.

Breakthrough technologies are an important piece of the energy management puzzle, but they tend to be very specific to individual processes or equipment types. Furthermore, they tend to arise through lengthy research and development programs-or occasionally through serendipity-and this makes it very difficult to anticipate them. An alert energy manager should always be on the lookout for breakthroughs that are relevant to his or her field, but we do not devote much space to this topic.

We invite you now to join us as we examine the how and the what of energy management in the process industries. We trust that you will be able to reinforce your current knowledge, and also learn some new things that will help you rise to greater heights of energy efficiency.

February 2015

Alan Rossiter

References

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