Control your processes to control your consumption
Step zero in energy performance: control. The starting point for ISO 50001 approaches, the metering plan will allow you to monitor the consumption of your processes and to monitor their performance through energy performance indicators. In practice, obtaining good performances will depend directly on the control of your processes:
- Compliance with operational procedures,
- Compliance with the instructions of the parameters under control (temperature, pressure, duration...) and recipes.
- Status and adjustment of equipment.
- ...
To not limit yourself to control but really improve your performance, it will be necessary to reconsider these elements.
Review your processes to improve your consumption
Part of the solution involves rethinking your production processes with an energy-oriented perspective:
- Were your procedures designed taking into account energy impacts?
- How did you determine your instructions and recipes. Can you modify them to find more optimal conditions in terms of energy performance?
- Is your equipment being used at its optimum operating point? Are settings and a different configuration possible for better energy performance?
It is possible to go further with investments:
- Is the energy source used relevant? Can you use a free internal source (process fluid whose heat could be used...)? Can you use another more economical source (hot or superheated water instead of steam...).
- Can you use more energy-efficient equipment technology (vapor recompression, multi-effect evaporation, mechanical rather than thermal concentration, refrigerant with better efficiency...)
- Can you do otherwise? Are current energy consumption necessary to carry out the transformations required for your production?
The options are numerous and the range of possible solutions is vast. Data analysis can help you see things more clearly.
Use your data to find solutions
To identify areas for improvement, you must integrate data relating to your processes into your analyses: energy consumption, quality of raw materials, recipes, management parameters, type of production... With this data, analyzed with the appropriate methods and tools, you will be able to:
- Identify consumption accurately, by stage, by type of product, by recipe...
- Use the natural variability of your processes to find new operating conditions that are more relevant in terms of energy.
- Feed the thoughts of your teams to imagine new solutions.
- Reliably build the design elements allowing you to consider new processes or equipment.
