Abstract:Energy, exergy and advanced exergy methods are used in this study to analyse a milk processing facility which is one of the largest energy consumers within the food industry in Denmark. While a conventional energy analysis maps the energy flows of the system and suggests opportunities for process integration, an exergy analysis pinpoints the locations, causes and magnitudes of thermodynamic losses. The advanced exergy analysis further identifies the real potential for thermodynamic improvements of the system by splitting exergy destruction into its avoidable and unavoidable parts, which are related to technological limitations, and into its endogenous and exogenous parts, which illustrate the interactions between the different sub-systems. This analysis is based on actual factory data from one of Europe's largest dairy producers: the complete production line is modelled, and includes the production of milk, cream and milk powder. The results show the optimisation potential based on 1st and 2nd law analyses. An evaluation and comparison of the applicability of exergy methods, including advanced exergy methods, to the dairy industry is made. The comparison includes typical energy mappings conducted onsite, and discusses the benefits and challenges of applying advanced thermodynamic methods to industrial processes.

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Excess heat is present in many sectors, and its utilization could reduce the primary energy use and emission of greenhouse gases. This work presents a geographical mapping of excess heat, in which excess heat from the industry and utility sector was distributed to specific geographical locations in Denmark. Based on this mapping, a systematic approach for identifying cases for the utilization of excess heat is proposed, considering the production of district heat and process heat, as well as power generation. The technical and economic feasibility of this approach was evaluated for six cases. Special focus was placed on the challenges for the connection of excess heat sources to heat users. To account for uncertainties in the model input, different methods were applied to determine the uncertainty of the results and the most important model parameters. The results show how the spatial mapping of excess heat sources can be used to identify their utilization potentials. The identified case studies show that it can be economically feasible to connect the heat sources to the public energy network or to use the heat to generate electricity. The uncertainty analysis suggests that the results are indicative and are particularly useful for a fast evaluation, comparison and prioritization of possible matches. The excess heat temperature and obtainable energy price were identified as the most important input parameters.