A study of current and possible future industrial engineering methodologies used to increase energy effieciency

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Energy-related costs are increasing steadily. This is especially true in South Africa where wehave been dealing with an energy crisis during the past couple of years. The increase inenergy-related costs puts energy dependent industries under financial pressure. It istherefore imperative to find ways to improve the efficiency with which energy is beingconsumed in order to decrease the amount of money that has to be allocated to energycosts.The efficient consumption of energy at a facility is crucial and to increase that efficiency,Energy Management Programs (EMPs) should be implemented. An important component ofEMPs is ascertaining the current energy consumption of a facility in order to identify areaswhere possible improvements can be made. This is done by completing an energy audit atthe facility. After the energy audit has been completed and Energy Conservation Methods(ECMs) have been identified, the implementation of these methods should commence.The aim of this study is to determine how Industrial Engineering (IE) methods can play amore integral role in making South Africa more energy efficient. As part of this study,research was done to identify current EMCs being implemented in different areas and fordifferent equipment in facilities. This information was compared to IE methods to identify thepossible relationship between the ECMs and IE methods.Content analyses were completed on both IE and energy efficiency corpora using theContent Analysis Toolkit (CAT) program. These analyses identified important topics in thesecorpora and correlations between these topics in order to show correlations between the IEand energy efficiency fields. The most significant correlations identified, were betweenstatistical methods and various energy efficiency topics.A case study was completed at a company in the Western Cape that manufactures electronicand integrated circuit products to implement the relevant ECMs. As part of the case study, anenergy audit was completed at the facility. The implementation of a number of the ECMs hasshown reductions in the daily kilowatt hours (kWh) consumptions. These reductions wereobtained through the implementation of a Shut Down Management program, which highlightsthe importance of management in an energy conservation project.The application of optimisation algorithms for energy efficient design was examined throughthe optimisation of lighting design, using a Genetic Algorithm. It was found that a GeneticAlgorithm is applicable to lighting design but requires further refinement in order to generatethe most optimal design solutions.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University