Saving Advice Process plants

Saving Advice Process plants

Process plants cover a diverse range of equipment, including dryers, furnaces, baking ovens, mixers & blenders, crushers & grinders, tanks & vats, treatment booths, and many others used for specialist jobs in industry.

Key Measures

• Process plants are often overlooked with regard to energy efficiency because it is seen as too specialist. Also product quality comes first and there is often a great reluctance to change anything in case the product is affected.
• Specialist help may well be needed, but frequently savings can be made through switching off plant when it is not doing anything or altering production schedules to better utilise plant when it is operating.
• Consider and build in energy efficiency opportunities when procuring and installing new process plant.

Practical Tips
Endeavour to use the plant as fully as possible. Under-utilised plants can often be significantly less efficient than plants running at full output.

Monitor the energy performance of significant processes separately so that any deterioration can be detected early and the impact of savings measures quantified.

Question whether processing regimes are optimised between quality and cost of operation. Process times for example may be unnecessarily long because 'that's the way we've always done it'.

Ensure equipment is properly maintained.

Where heat is rejected from processes, consider opportunities for heat recovery and its use elsewhere, such as for space heating.