Chemicals Industry Bandwidth Study
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Chemicals manufacturing is the second largest energy-consuming enterprise in U.S. industry. The Industry Technologies Program (ITP) works with the chemicals industry to accelerate the development of advanced, energy-efficient technologies. To guide research decision-making and ensure that Federal funds are spent effectively, ITP needs to know which manufacturing processes are most energy-intensive and least efficient. To gain knowledge of process inefficiencies in chemicals manufacture, ITP has commissioned a "bandwidth" study to analyze 25 of the highest energy-consuming chemical processes.
The Chemical Bandwidth Study provides a snapshot of potentially recoverable energy losses during chemical manufacturing. The advantage of this study is the use of "exergy" analysis as a tool for pinpointing inefficiencies. Prior analyses have focused only on energy and ignored the quality of energy and the degration of energy quality. Exergy analysis goes a step further to evaluate the quality of the energy lost, and distiguishes between recoverable and non-recoverable energy. The objectives of the bandwidth study were to
- identify and quantify the inefficiencies of existing technologies and processes in selected chemicals manufacture;
- pinpoint the location of energy losses;
- calculate the recoverable energies for each process;
- examine energy losses in major unit operations that are common across the chemicals selected; and
- recommend research and development that could have an impact on reducing losses and recovering energy sources.
Read the full report (PDF 819 KB) for details on the results of the study. Download Adobe Reader