An integrated approach for improving energy efficiency of manufacturing process chains

Abstract

The rising energy prices and increasingly imposing regulations have drawn attention for improving the energy efficiency of manufacturing processes. Over the past decade, different approaches have been developed to target from individual unit processes to entire manufacturing systems. However, each model or approach has limitations in terms of the efficiency improvement. Thus, an integrated approach is proposed to overcome these limitations combining unit process energy consumption models with production system simulation. The outcome potentially leads to a more energy-efficient production and process planning, which considers the dynamics of individual processes as well as the entire system. Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the approach and its benefits.

A Combined Approach for Production Parameter Selection and On-site Energy Supply Management in Manufacturing Industry

“…However, a manufacturing plant's operation also relies on other utility providers ( Figure 1). This consists of facilities such as HVAC and air compressors which provide required production environment conditions namely heating, refrigeration, conditioned air and process-related utilities such as CA (Mousavi et al, 2015). These facilities consume additional energy inputs which can contribute to a significant share of energy consumption in a manufacturing plant.…”

“…This unit forms the basic element in the framework towards predicting energy demand (Mousavi et al, 2015). Later on, individual process units are connected to each other by considering process layout and operational sequences.…”

“…In this case, energy flows associated with manufacturing system operation is directly influenced by selected production parameters. For example, varying production rate of machine tools can have a significant impact on material flow through the factory, which directly impacts energy demand profiles at process level (Mousavi, Thiede, Li, Kara & Herrmann, 2015). A balanced material flow can reduce the energy consumption of a machine by minimising the time spent in non-productive operations such as idle mode (Pechmann, Scholer & Hackmann, 2012).…”

“…The importance of operational states in representing the transient performance of production processes and energy requirement has been illustrated in several studies (Mouzon & Yildirim, 2008;Mouzon, Yildirim & Twomey, 2007). In this case, comprehensive models should be implemented to take into account operational states of individual units such as changeover, stand by, start up and cooling down (P. Ghadimi, Kara & Kornfeld, 2014;Herrmann et al, 2011;Mitra et al, 2013;Mousavi et al, 2015).…”

“…A state-based modelling technique was used to develop this module in the previous work of authors (Mousavi et al, 2015). This module considers production plan and parameters to estimate energy carrier requirements including electricity, heat/steam and CA.…”