Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Research approaches
3- BEC and SEC correlations
4- Conclusions
References
Abstract
According to the 2015 Thai Energy Conservation Plan, the government aims to reduce energy consumption by 37% in 2036 compared to the final energy consumption in 2010. The industry sector consumes about 35.7% of total energy consumption. Non-metallic sector accounts for 30.74% of the energy consumption of the industry sector. The cement industry is one of the non-metallic sector that consumes up to 60.69% of the energy consumption of the non-metallic sector. Specific energy consumption (SEC) and Baseline energy consumption (BEC) are used as a tool to assign energy conservation target for each industry sector. This paper presents BEC and SEC for cement production. There are 12 of 21 participating cement plants that provide relevant information to be used for BEC and SEC analysis. According to the analysis, the BEC and SEC of cement production does not depend only on the quantity produced, but also ambient temperature and humidity. Therefore, setting a typical BEC and/or SEC target for reducing energy consumption is not appropriate and unfair to the factory. The BEC and SEC equations are developed using statistical approaches. The cement productions are classified into 2 categories; clinker and cement. Regression equations are developed to determine the relationship between BEC/SEC and relevant variables, including BEC/SEC for electrical energy, thermal energy and total energy.
Conclusions
The cement industry is the most energy-consumed industry subsector which consumes almost 60.69% of nonmetallic sector. The cement industry is one of target subsectors to promote and regulate energy efficiency measures to achieve the EEP 2015 target. Energy consumed are divided into two portions by products, i.e., one to produce clinker and the other to produce cement. Most of the energy are used to produce clinker by which both thermal and electrical energy are needed. For cement, only electrical energy are required. Regression equations to determine BEC and SEC are developed for clinker and cement products in Thailand. They can be further used as benchmarks for energy consumption in this sector. Data for analysis and regression are gathered and measured from 12 of 25 cement plants. BEC and SEC equations are developed based on products, i.e., clinker and cement. The results show that the equation can predict the value within acceptable tolerances. BEC and SEC depend on three variables, i.e., quantity of product, yearly-averaged ambient temperature and yearly-averaged ambient humidity. For each particular year, data for each variable are gathered and substituted into the equations to calculate BEC and SEC that will be further used as benchmarking. They will be compared with the actual BEC and SEC of the same year to determine whether the energy usage is effective or not.