Industrial operational efficiency improvements

Much of the potential for improvement in technical energy efficiencies in industrial processes depends on how closely such processes have approached their thermodynamic limit. There are two types of energy efficiency measures (1) more efficient use in existing equipment through improved operation, maintenance or retrofit of equipment and (2) use of more efficient new equipment by introducing more efficient processes and systems at the point of capital turnover or expansion of production. More efficient practices and new technologies exist for all industrial sectors. Table 2 outlines some examples of energy efficiency improvement techniques and practices. 

Traditionally, customers employ water treatment service companies simply as external contractors to assist in the maintenance of clean and efficient waterside surfaces in their various heating, steam generating, cooling, and certain industrial process systems. The customers benefit from genuine improvements in operating efficiency, reductions in maintenance time, and replacement component costs. In addition, where industrial processes are involved they often profit from an added-value, due to an improved product quality or reduction in manufacturing cost. 

Throughout the chemical industry, the ways in which data are turned into information and used, managed, transmitted, and stored will be critical to its ability to compete. Improved and enhanced information systems are at the very heart of the vision, which sees the chemical industry operating highly efficiently and economically. 

In the last decades, the chemical industry and its customers have had to cope with a massive expansion of their reach and scale as globalization took effect, coupled with a need to comply with ever more stringent and varied QSHE regulations. To improve operational efficiency in this vast and complex environment, these companies have turned more and more to outsourcing so that they can concentrate on their core competences. The changing market environment offers major opportunities to the distribution companies ... 

Beginning with the industrial revolution, great improvements in standards of living have been achieved by the use of thermal devices, which interconvert heat and work. Three such devices, which operate with two heat reservoirs, are shown in Fig. 3. For each, the efficiency, e, is defined as the amount of the type of energy desired divided by the amount of energy that is expended in obtaining it. 

The U.S. DOE s extensive gasification industry interviews in 2002 found that there was not much incentive for gas cleanup operations above 400 °C. Prior engineering analyses have persuaded the industry that the efficiency improvements from operating above 400 °C are not worth the additional capital costs due to materials and the increased equipment sizes resulting from the larger volumetric flows. 

In 2002, the industry reviewed the performance of the Responsible Care program and decided to make endorsement of a new set of management principles mandatory for its members (90 percent of U.S. chemical manufacturing capacity). The objective was to realize greater business value from improved EH S performance, higher product yield, enhanced operational efficiencies and better community and stakeholder relationships. 

Many technological changes introduced to the iron and steel industry to improve operating efficiency also reduced levels of emission per tonne of... 

In France in 1902, Georges Claude (1870-1960) (75) and his colleagues developed a practical piston expansion machine capable of reliable operation at the temperatures required to liquefy air (76) (Figure 3). Recognizing that the efficiency improvements offered by this technology for the production of lower temperature refrigeration could provide a commercial advantage, Claude and his partner, Paul Delorme, formed the French industrial gas company L Air Liquid that same year (77). 

Whilst 1994 had a sad start, particularly for fast reactors with the closure of the Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) the period since has seen many successes for the UK nuclear industry. The Utilities efforts have been rewarded with significant improvements in the operation efficiency of existing reactors and the UK s first Pressurised Water Reactor at Sizewell B achieved criticality on 31 January 1995. Good progress has also been achieved with a number of fuel cycle facilities which will make a major contribution to nuclear fuel recycle, ie ... 

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