Energy Efficiency Evaluation E3 Platform

Improvement of energy efficiencyin industrial water circuits

Online self-assessment, benchmarkingand economic decision support

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Table of contents

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3!

2. About the Horizon 2020 WaterWatt Project ......................................................................... 4!

3. The WaterWatt E3 Platform .................................................................................................... 7!

4. Good Practice for Energy Efficiency Management ............................................................ 14!

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1. Introduction

The H2020 project WaterWatt aims to increase energy efficiency in industrial water cir-cuits (IWCs) across all industrial sectors. These circuits are auxiliary electric motor driven systems with a high potential for energy efficiency optimization. Currently, no bench-marks for energy consumption in IWCs and no tools to systematically improve their en-ergy efficiency exist. Consequently, there is a lack of awareness of the energy saving po-tential.

The relative energy demand of Industrial Water Circuits is low – approx. 5 % of the over-all energy used in industrial processes – but their absolute energy demand is significant: the total energy demand of all IWCs across the European Union is estimated to be 74,000 GWh per year. Measures aimed at improving energy efficiency have principally been directed at primary production, which means that the energy saving potential of IWCs remains high. Based on sector specific studies in energy demand and effects of energy efficiency measures it can be assumed that savings of between 5 and 10% might be made. This corresponds to approximately 3,700 GWh and 7,400 GWh annually in IWC energy related consumption.

Improving energy efficiency is critical challenge for all industrial sectors, particularly for compliance with energy targets, audits and regulations. However, it is also important for future economic growth and industrial expansion, as well as future generations and meeting climate change obligations. To address these challenges and empower busi-nesses in Europe, the WaterWatt project has developed an open-access online platform – the Energy Efficiency Evaluation (E3) Platform – that allows SMEs, large industrial en-terprises, and others utilising large water circuits, to self-assess energy use and evaluate a range of existing technological options that can improve the efficiency of their circuits.

This brochure introduces the objectives of the WaterWatt project, including the tools and reports that have been developed by the consortium and made accessible on the E3 Platform, and the recommendations of the consortium on good practice.

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2. About the Horizon 2020 WaterWatt Project

The European H2020 WaterWatt project has addressed the improvement of energy effi-ciency in industrial water circuits (IWCs). As mentioned, these circuits are auxiliary elec-tric motor driven systems with high potential for efficiency optimization. The aim of the project was to remove market barriers for energy efficient solutions, in particular the lack of expertise and information on energy management and saving potential in indus-trial water circuits.

Eleven case studies of representative water circuits have been conducted at industrial sites of different industrial branches including Metal and Steel, Chemicals, Fibre (paper) and Food and Beverages (Table 1).

Table 1: List of the eleven case Studies of representative water circuits

The aim was to identify sustainable water and energy efficiency measures, which are not only technical but also take site specific contextual factors (e.g. regulations, subsidies, human behaviours) into account (Table 2).

Industry Case study Site Representative circuits Flow

[m3/h]

Installed power [kW]

Metal Stainless wire processing

DE Open cooling (rolling mill) with sand filtration

2400 1220

Closed cooling (inductive furnace) 63 37

Carbon steel production

UK Closed cooling (blast furnace) 5700 901

DE Open gas washing (basic oxygen furnace) 3200 800

NO Open cooling/quenching of rebar rods and wire coils

780 315

Manganese production

NO Closed cooling (furnace) 350 171

Open gas washing 250 111

Chemical Pharma DE Open cooling 3600 1254

Paper Paper factory PT Fiber transportation 2400 240

Food and Beverages

Sugar factory PT Water treatment (filtration) 145 135

Open cooling 1600 627

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Table 2: List of technical and contextual factors under consideration in the case studies

Based on the experiences gained in the case studies an Energy Efficiency Evaluation Platform (WaterWatt E3 Platform) was developed to offer stakeholders expert knowledge on improving energy efficiency. The outputs include tools for information, feedback and reporting, as well as tools to support training actions, and a modelling interface to de-sign and simulate individual water circuits.

A spin-off company will be founded by project partners to ensure the further develop-ment of the platform and to assist and consult companies on demand with high throughput industrial water circuits in improving energy efficiency (Figure 1).

Figure 1: WaterWatt Project concept

Factor group Factors

Circuit functions cooling, gas washing, rinsing, steam production and process operation

Circuit components pump, pipe, cooling tower, gas washing tower, integrated treatment

Technical parameters water flow, pressure, energy consumption, required water quality

Organisational factors Intersections between human actions and industrial water circuits

Contextual factors Costs, regulations, subsidies, site related conditions

Characteriza*on-of-energy-consump*on-of-IWC-• Technical-• Contextual-&-Organiza*onal-

-

Industry-11-Case-Studies-Metal,'Chemistry,'Fiber,''and'Food'Industries'

E3-PlaBorm- SpinCoff-

Improving-Energy-Efficiency-

Energy-Efficiency-Measures-

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Project Consortium

! DECHEMA e.V. – Gesellschaft für chemische Technik und Biotechnologie, Frank-furt am Main, Germany, coordinates scientific projects and experts with the aim to identify and evaluate technological trends and to facilitate the transfer of research results into industrial applications.

! ISQ – Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade, Lissabon, Portugal, is a private non-profit technological company. The ISQ Sustainable Innovation Centre performs ap-plied research to support companies on creating value through innovation in re-source and energy efficiency, and risk management.

! BFI – VDEh-Betriebsforschungsinstitut GmbH, Düsseldorf, Germany, is a private-sector non-profit institute for applied research and development. One of its key re-search aspects is the optimization of water and energy consumption in steel pro-duction processes.

! SINTEF Energi AS, Trondheim, Norway, is the largest independent research organi-sation in Scandinavia, and is a not-for-profit institute. One focus area is the design of thermal systems and components for a wide range of applications, including indus-trial heat recovery.

! Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences, Cardiff, United Kingdom, excels in researching today’s workforce, its changing composition, experiences, working life, the identities people bring to work as well as the regulation of work.

! ISMB – Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Turin, Italy, now LINKS Foundation, is a non-profit Institution operating at a national and international level carrying out ap-plied research in the sectors of engineering and architecture, thus focusing both on information and telecommunication and on territorial and environmental sciences.

Contact

Dr. Jochen Michels DECHEMA e.V. Theodor-Heuss-Allee 25 60486 Frankfurt am Main Germany

Tel.: +49 69 7564-157 Fax: +49 69 7564-117 E-Mail: jochen.michels@dechema.de

Nicole Heine DECHEMA e.V. Theodor-Heuss-Allee 25 60486 Frankfurt am Main Germany

Tel.: +49 69 7564-145 Fax: +49 69 7564-117 E-Mail: nicole.heine@dechema.de

Project homepage: https://www.WaterWatt.eu/

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3. The WaterWatt E3 Platform

During the last three years the WaterWatt Energy Efficiency Evaluation (E3) Platform was continuously developed with a user friendly interface consisting of three main sections: the assessment tools section, the simulation tool and its tutorial section, and a section of resources containing the knowledge gained based on the reports and databases pro-duced in the project. The user will also find a guideline to use the platform and facts re-lated to the WaterWatt project and its consortium.

The URL of the WaterWatt E3 Platform (Figure 2): <http://www.E3-WaterWatt.net>

Figure 2: Upper part of the WaterWatt E3 Platform (landing page, adjusted)

The main objectives of the Energy Efficiency Evaluation Platform are the following:

! To increase the awareness of the possible reduction of energy consumption in in-dustrial water circuits and support the engagement of stakeholders using gamifica-tion approach

! To provide a shared knowledge base of best practices, technologies and organiza-tional models concerning the energy and water management

! To provide advanced tools for self-assessment and monitoring

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The WaterWatt E3 Platform is therefore a comprehensive tool designed for an industrial user, typically an infrastructure or a maintenance manager working with water circuits and responsible for energy efficiency and (preparation of) investment decisions at in-dustrial plants. It can be used as a tool to estimate and/or calculate the energy efficiency of industrial water circuits in the frame of energy audits to qualify for funding and sub-sidies to finance energy efficiency measures.

Multilingual website

In addition to English most of the platform content – especially the simulator tutorial and the platform guide – is available in Portuguese, Italian and German languages. The databases and the public deliverables, which are available on the platform are in English language only.

Registration and Login

The platform is made for you as our user, where you can conduct assessments, calcula-tions and simulations. For your convenience we will save your work in our database for easy recall of past actions.

Therefore, during registration we just ask you to provide a valid email address (for send-ing a confirmation link and lost-password requests) and, of cause, a password. Never-theless, there is a section called “My profile” ( ) where you can provide some further personal information. This is useful if you are going to use the Forum section of the E3 Platform.

After login you have access to your saved previous work and results.

Assessment Tools

The aim of the assessment section is to support the user to estimate and compare the calculated energy efficiency of certain industrial water circuits by applying the following tools independently. All tools are kept simple to produce an approximate estimation. Nevertheless the user will get a good idea of which parameters are necessary to know and which additional factors may influence the decision for certain improvement measures.

If a more detailed assessment is required an expert based evaluation is also offered. The user can contact the experts where more specific advise is needed. The expert eval-uation request is based on an extended questionnaire concerning your sector and your industrial water circuit.

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Tools of the Assessment section

Self-Assessment Tool

Estimate savings achievable with available technologies for industrial water circuits.

Enter flow rate, operation time and energy price as well as some basic characteristics of your circuit (e.g. use of pumps and cool-ing towers with fans, variable water de-mand). The amount of maximum possible savings, as well as a short list of suggested improvement measures will then be dis-played.

Benchmark Calculator

Compare the specific energy consumption of your circuit to the WaterWatt benchmarks.

The benchmark calculator is useful if you already know the specific energy con-sumption of your circuit. Then you can compare it against the values of the Wa-terWatt case studies. Specific energy con-sumptions of circuits will be added to the calculator for more reliable benchmarking results.

Improvement Measures

Study the manifold solutions developed towards becoming more energy efficient.

In addition to the technical description of the improvement measures, which have been suggested in WaterWatt case studies for the various elements of water circuits, a methodology is provided for evaluation and prioritisation of improvement meas-ures. A short report on lessons learned in some of the case studies is also available.

Payback Time Calculator

Calculate the payback time of an improvement measure using a holistic approach.

The Payback Time Calculator computes total costs, specific total costs per kW saved, annual savings and payback time for a specific improvement measure. In addition to the technical parameters you may just include contextual factors like subsidies, training costs and expected costs or savings on maintenance.

Simulation tools

The core element of the E3 Platform is this simulation tool. It is based on the OpenMod-elica simulation environment and the WaterWatt library of circuit compounds, which was developed to generate the models of the industrial water circuits examined in the case studies.

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The WaterWatt library is therefore structured mainly in three families, according to the following three field of application:

! Cold Water Circuits. Modelling of industrial circuits in which the relevant phenom-ena are essentially of hydraulic type, no significant thermal dynamics is present and the fluid is water in liquid state at ambient temperature.

! Water Steam Circuits. Modelling of industrial circuits in which the relevant phe-nomena are both of hydraulic and thermal type, and the fluid may be water in liquid state, steam, or a mixture of them.

! Slurry Circuits. Modelling of industrial cold water based circuits (see above) with fluids, which may be of type water waste, pulp or bulk waste.

The online user interface is a dashboard (Figure 3), which is designed to facilitate the complex modelling of industrial water circuits for simulating and testing improvement measures (substitution/addition of circuit components, redesign of circuits or water flow management) to find solutions for optimising energy efficiency in silica.

Figure 3: Dashboard of the Simulation tool of the E3 Platform.

In addition to the models of the technical components for water circuits there are tools available to control the pumping regime over time and to calculate the Key Performance Indicators (KPI), which are meant to be transferable indicators of the energy efficiency of the simulated system. After the simulation has been conducted a graphical representa-tion of the simulation results is available in the dashboard. The parameters of all com-ponents and KPIs can therefore be visualized.

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Since this is the most complex tool of the E3 Platform a detailed tutorial dedicated to the simulation tool is provided, which explains the general use of the dashboard, and doc-uments each of the application families and modelled components of the WaterWatt library.

Tools of the Simulator section

Simulator

Simulate water circuits by us-ing prebuild models or creat-ing original models.

The simulator allows the creation of your own water circuits based on predefined models, which are available from very simple cycles to the WaterWatt case study circuits. Your installations can be opti-mised by changing components, modify-ing the circuit topology or reducing flow rates. The graphical analysis helps you to find the most energy efficient conditions.

Tutorial

Learn how to develop water circuits, look up models of com-ponents and KPI calculations.

This tutorial provides you with an intro-duction to all elements and controls of the dashboard, and step-by-step guidance to use and modify a circuit. It outlines how to check and compile the circuit and the pro-cess to start and analyse a simulation. All component models, and how they behave within the simulator, are described in de-tail. The mathematics of the KPI models is also described.

Resources

The section on resources is based on desktop and field research activities of the Water-Watt project. This section provides information about energy efficiency in industrial wa-ter circuits, with the aim of increasing awareness on what potential exists for the reduc-tion of energy consumption, as well as related economic and environmental effects. It discusses the possible impacts of energy saving, outlines environmental laws and regu-lations, advises on how to search for supporting funds (both National and European sources) and details lessons from the eleven project case studies.

For all sections the underlying reports, which are public deliverables are also available on the E3 Platform for download.

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Tools of the Resources section I

Funding Opportunities

Consult this database for the financial support of energy effi-ciency improvement measures.

The database consists of >50 datasets on funding opportunities on European and national (United Kingdom, Germany, Por-tugal, Italy and Norway) levels. A short de-scription in each dataset outlines the fund-ing target area and beneficiaries, as well as requirements for funding. The provi-sion of the URL of the respective funding body allows one-click access.

Contextual Factors

Take these into account to im-prove the accuracy of your payback time calculations.

Contextual factors refer to circumstances, conditions or settings that might impact decisions concerning energy efficiency in-vestments in various ways. Some can act as barriers or enablers for investment de-cisions, some can have a direct impact on the cost-effectiveness of an energy effi-ciency investment. You are informed about real life examples of contextual factors.

Database of Components

Compare the energy efficiency of your circuit components to those in our database.

More than 450 components are listed in the database of components, which fo-cuses on cooling towers, filters, motors, and pumps. Retailers and Manufacturers of the components are listed with contact data. For each component the specific key figures are listed, which you can in turn use as parameters in the simulation tool to find the best fitting solutions on energy efficiency improvements.

Case Studies

Can you reduce flow rates without adversely affecting production safety?

In each case study components were characterised – their specific energy con-sumption was gauged and energy efficien-cy improvement measures were devel-oped. Furthermore, regional factors and sociological boundary conditions for cir-cuit operation were documented. More-over, the transferability of the specific en-ergy consumption and improvement measures to other circuits was evaluated.

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Tools of the Resources section II

Good Practices Guide

Create organisational envi-ronments that contribute to increased energy efficiency

Examples of ‘good practice’ were encoun-tered during interviews with managers and operators responsible for water cir-cuits in their respective plants. It is clear, for example, that the way in which maintenance of water circuits in a plant is organised can have profound effects on the degree of energy efficiency of a water circuit. Moreover, benefiting from the in-novative potential of staff depends on or-ganisational structures and processes.

Legislation and Regulation

Access the EU and national level legislative framework per-taining to energy efficiency.

We have produced a report that discusses the behaviour of organisations in relation to energy efficiency imperatives and envi-ronmental regulation within EU member states (France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom). You can also find sectorial policies and initiatives of the salient European-level employer/trade associations, in particular for certain ener-gy-intensive industries.

Impacts of Energy Savings

Consider industrial water cir-cuits as important part of pro-duction processes.

Industrial water circuits are an important but often neglected part of the production processes. They are considered as auxilia-ry systems and have often not been a fo-cus for energy efficiency measures. Thus, the potential for improvement of energy efficiency is high. There are many technical solutions to tap this potential, for example energy efficient pumps, cooling towers and automated demand oriented circuit operation systems.

WaterWatt Mobile App

Test and improve your know-ledge on energy efficiency us-ing gamification.

By using the WaterWatt Mobile App you can learn how to improve energy efficien-cy in Industrial Water Circuits. The App aims to provide knowledge about the en-ergy efficiency in form of ‘fact-drops’ and quizzes. These two sections are comple-mentary to each other, allowing you to learn by reading the ‘fact-drops’ and then testing your understanding by doing the quizzes. You can download it from the Android Play Store.

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4. Good Practice for Energy Efficiency Management

Energy management not only requires the implementation of energy-efficient technolo-gies and the replacement of inefficient equipment but also includes care and mainte-nance of technology to preserve an efficient operation, requiring ongoing work and im-provements, which means a proactive and effective maintenance scheme is required as well as a ‘continuous improvement’ ethos around efficiency and upgrading.

The following recommendations are the quintessence of the experiences made in con-ducing the eleven WaterWatt case studies and research.

Circuit planning/revamping

! Communication between “operators” and “customers” of water circuits in order to provide energy and water efficient production by:

! Consideration of alternative water saving production processes

! Consideration of waste heat reuse as alternative to cooling

! Minimisation of pressure losses:

! Circuit scheme with minimal number of bends and valves

! Circuit elements (filters, valves) with low pressure loss

! Water flow speed below 2 m/s

! Avoidance of manual regulation possibilities like throttling valves

! Energy efficient circuit elements

! Efficient pumps, motors and fans

! Optimal matching of the pumps, motors and fans to the circuit requirements

! Cooling tower circuit separated from the main circuit and equipped with temper-ature sensors

! Adjustment of water circuit operation to the variable production process

! Pumps and fans automatically stop in case of production stop

! Pumps are equipped with variable speed drives. The rotation frequency is auto-matically adjusted with the help of pressure sensors

! Fans are equipped with variable speed drives. The rotation frequency is automat-ically adjusted with the help of temperature sensors

! Monitoring equipment for water flow and energy demand or energy efficiency mon-itors for pumps and cooling tower fans

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Circuit operation

! Benchmarking

! Regular evaluation of energy demand and energy efficiency e.g. on basis of online data

! Regular inspection and maintenance

! Regular pipe cleaning

! Central documentation of repair cases

! Regular dialogs between “operators” and “customers” of water circuits in organise energy and water efficient operation

! Energy efficiency targets on the company level

! Mechanism and budget for improvement suggestions within the company

Organisational Structures

! Commitment from senior management to energy efficiency

! Provision of adequate resources for investment in energy efficient technology as well as for information dissemination and training

! Targets for energy use such as quantitative energy-saving goals for company set by senior management, cascaded down the organisation and integrated into operating, maintenance and purchasing procedures

! Accountability for the achievement of these objectives, at departmental, section and employee level (possibly linked to financial incentive/bonus schemes)

Energy Management Infrastructure

! The creation and dissemination of a formal company-specific energy policy

! The implementation of a formal energy management system

! Regular and meaningful engagement of all staff in improving energy efficiency

! Regular energy auditing to gain knowledge about energy flows

! The establishment of Energy Teams in each production unit comprised of engineer-ing, maintenance and production personnel

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Supportive Human Resources Management

! Ensuring that the organisation has appropriate technical skills in place

! Regular training courses both to develop technical skills and raise awareness of en-ergy efficiency

! Ongoing communication and regular sharing of information

! Performance against energy objectives for departments, sections, teams and indi-viduals to be formally assessed in appraisals with links to reward schemes

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Notes

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Notes

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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 695820

WaterWatt Project Consortium: