4 - Auditing energy and water use in the food industry

Abstract

Publisher Summary Energy and water use is an important issue in the food and beverage industry. Auditing energy and water use is central to any resource and waste management program in industrial facilities. Indeed, although audits (also called assessments, surveys or analyses) may be performed on virtually any type of resource or waste management practice; water and energy audits are the most common application. They are used to understand the current energy and water usage in the plant, identify the largest users, highlight areas of excessive waste, and propose economically viable solutions to reduce these losses. Auditing energy and water use in industrial facilities is a vast and important subject. This is the only way to first determine where in the process and how much energy and water are being used and, ultimately, to identify opportunities for reducing plant energy and water use. Depending on the scope, the process to be analyzed and the size of the plant, three types of audits can be called on: (1) the walk-through audit, providing a quick overview of certain equipment-based opportunities; (2) the detailed audit, to yield an in-depth analysis on specific components; (3) the Process Integration (PI) analysis, to approach a plant as a whole and take a systematic look at all processing steps and their links. This chapter presents the key aspects to consider when auditing water and energy management and a step-by-step approach to conduct a water and energy audit in a food processing plant. It provides some case studies and tables that are taken from real energy analyses conducted by the authors.