Analysis of Energy Efficiency of Industrial Processes

This volume uses the fundamentals of thermodynamics to address primarily students as well as workers and researchers in energy resource management and chemical and mechanical engineering. V.S. Stepanov's method of analysis of energy efficiency of industrial production schemes takes into account the thermodynamic chemical energy and "exergy" of all substances/apparatuses involved, from the acquisition of raw materials to the recycling of waste products. Prognoses are made forlarge-scale metallurgical plants. Particular emphasis is placed on the assessment of the optimal volume of secondary energy resource use.

It is universally recognized that the end of the current and the beginning of the next century will be characterized by a radical change in the existing trends in the economic development of all countries and a transition to new principles of economic management on the basis of a resource and energy conservation policy. Thus there is an urgent necessity to study methods, technical aids and economic consequences of this change, and particularly, to determine the possible amounts of energy resources which could be conserved (energy "reserves") in different spheres of the national economy. An increased interest towards energy conservation in industry, one of the largest energy consumers, is quite natural and is manifested by the large num- ber of publications on this topic. But the majority of publications are devoted to the solution of narrowly defined problems, determination of energy reserves in specific processes and plants, efficiency estimation of individual energy conserva- tion measures, etc. However, it is necessary to develop a general methodological approach to the solution of such problems and create a scientific and methodical base for realizing an energy conservation policy. Such an effort is made in this book, which is concerned with methods for studying energy use efficiency in technological processes and estimation of the theoretical and actual energy reserves in a given process, technology, or industrial sector on the basis of their complete energy balances.