Rising fuel prices drive up economic benefits?
May 1st 2007

The cost of energy per unit of production is often high and producers are always keen to find ways of making savings. The Government "save-it" campaign increased public awareness of the financial benefits of switching off lights, closing doors, and using insulation, but it also initiated the idea of finite fuel resources and the need to reduce energy usage. Following apace, the concept of greenhouse gases and the spectre of global warming, has further enhanced these ideals. The need to conserve energy is now well established, but commercial factors still pose substantial hurdles in achieving this goal.

The Boards of large companies are well aware of their corporate environmental responsibilities, but not many companies are willing, or able, to spend £20K to reduce fuel costs by £2K/year, however much they are committed to fuel conservation. The Government is doing its bit to help under the Action Energy, interest free, capital loan scheme, but still the underlining driving force for energy saving is financial and cost benefit usually overrides environmental benefit.

Therm Tech Contracts has been deeply involved in the changing pattern of industrial energy saving activity. When fuel was cheap then "waste heat" was often "wasted heat", it being cheaper to leave a process running rather than start up and shut down according to production. Rises in fuel price, assisted by modern control systems, soon put that house in order.

Original Equipment Manufacturers try to maintain low capital costs and this is often contrary to low energy use. A drier will take in air at ambient temperatures and expel air at a higher temperature, if heat recovery were applied and the waste heat used to preheat the incoming air, then the energy cost per unit of production would decrease. Alternatively, hot water could be generated from the drier exhaust for a washing process upstream of the drier.

These ideas are not new but their exploitation is often retarded by the practical problems involved rather than the cost benefit. The waste gases may contain dust, corrosive elements, water, oils, fats, lint or sublimates, all of which may cause fouling problems in a heat recovery system. Alternatively, some forms of drier

inspire air through general gaps in the casing rather than at specific points, this ensures that exhaust gases do not escape from the oven, but makes it difficult to effectively recycle hot air. All these problems can be resolved, but the increased system cost will then decrease the cost benefit. However, with fuel prices rising quicker than inflation, the cost benefit becomes more favourable. Specific process knowledge from users, assisted by specialist heat recovery techniques and experience, has allowed many companies to make hitherto inefficient equipment far more "thermally productive".

Looking to the future, we face the prospect of fossil fuel shortages, rising prices and energy rationing. Increases in thermal productivity can mitigate some of the effect but the process industries heavy dependency on fossil fuels can only be overcome by a fundamental change in processing technology. Energy production from renewable resources is necessary but this must be coupled with a reducing need for energy in the first place to make us more "energy productive".

New process technologies must evolve, by using biological rather than chemical process routes, by using less energy intensive methods, the latent heat of freezing is far less than the latent heat of boiling but how many companies capitalise on this fact when they want to concentrate a liquor. Microwave heating only heats the product and not its surrounding environment. Such techniques must be developed not only to maintain our competitive edge but also to preserve our own environment.

The emerging Nations are gnawing away at our manufacturing base but they are achieving this by reduced labour costs rather than more thermally or energy productive processing. As we were in the past, they are consuming vast amounts of energy and raw materials very inefficiently and far in excess of our usage per tonne of product. However they are late coming to the watering hole and the environmental and energy constraints acknowledged in the West are global and will equally affect the emerging nations.

As their industrial wealth increases so will the material and energy aspirations of their labour force and although they will have intense environmental pressures exerted on their economy by the international community, their fundamental restraint to growth will be their inefficiency. For the future good of the planet, as well as for the continued economic growth of the developed nations, we must take the lead in embracing a low carbon economy and developing new energy productive processes. Rising fuel prices will drive up economic benefits...provided we take advantage of it.