Engineering Sustainability - A successful meeting held at Siemens, Manchester - Part 1 : Energy and Water
Energy
Steve Barker of Siemens congratulated the Food and Beverage industry as the most receptive industry on energy use reduction. This reduction in costs, improves asset utilisation, reduces carbon footprint and increases profitability. Automation and allied techniques are important in the economical use of energy in manufacturing. The starting point is measurement and monitoring of energy and costs. A systematic approach is required and the simple measures leading to significant savings can cost little but save energy and money. For example a brewery saved £1million over 9 months. If the business does nothing, the costs escalate relentlessly, reducing competitiveness.
Water
Paul Tipper of United Utilities, the UK's largest water company, agreed that the strategy for water economy began with data gathering, so monitoring and metering, sub-meters are helpful and scrutiny of the bills. Simple measures are effective here too, button taps, trigger handles on hoses but the most important measure was to involve the staff and engage them in the activity with posters, stickers and consumption data to raise awareness. Effluent treatment can lead to product recovery, such as starch from the potato crisp process. Heinz found that the combination of two processes in canning saved 50% of the water use. An employee suggested that rather than washing beans to remove field dirt, a dry shaking process could be used. This was found to be more effective. McVities used a new wash belt system for biscuits and found this more economical on water use.
Debate
Samworths reported that metering and energy management were important items when planning new build and meters would be installed where real time software can be used to control usage better. Paul Tipper reported that the food and drink industry is the biggest user of on-site treatment and this could be of such high quality that the effluent could be returned to rivers and canals. Water companies had water efficiency teams and could assist with leakage detection. The water networks had sensors for pressure and flow meters. New measurement techniques were being developed. Economy in the food industry was important due to low margins. Marks and Spencer in Plan A champion economy. Retailers create specifications. These are passed down the food chain and other retailers are starting to follow this lead. Marel are now considering production loss of water in machine design. A success measure to avoid waste is the collection of particulates during meat processing. Drier cleaning could be more hygienic as water may spread pathogens and dry handling could be given more attention. Universities are working on process controllers, models of energy and water flow and fault prognosis. Educating the shop floor workers was important as was legislation in focusing management on these key issues.
Presentation downloads: Proceedings/FMEG Siemens meeting 23 June 2010
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