Reduce energy consumption with innovation

Still, it would be wrong to believe that grand, expensive projects are the only answer. Relatively simple solutions using existing technologies can also go a long way in making energy consumption more efficient.

Often quick and simple to implement, energy-efficient design in both industrial and household settings can provide major environmental benefits. And, just as importantly, it can also save money.

Take manufacturing. Heavy industry accounts for some 50 per cent of global energy consumption and about 20 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions. The UN predicts that these figures will increase 50 to 150 per cent by 2050.

Yet many of these emissions could drop by a quarter from their current levels simply by making better use of energy efficient technologies that are already commercially available.

When people think of the biggest industrial energy consumers, their minds tend to turn to the huge engines, machines and robots that occupy factory floors.

But the technology capable of reducing the energy consumption of heavy industrial machinery – such as variable speed electric motors that can cut power use by 30-70 per cent – is already in use. As Al-Karim Govindji of the Carbon Trust explains, industrial engineers already know how to make big pieces of equipment more efficient.

“Looking at ways to recover heat; finding mechanisms to use it somewhere else in your factory; being a bit more efficient in terms of how much air you put into a combustion chamber – these are the things people struggle with,” Govindji explains.

So industry also needs to look in the less obvious places if it wants to cut its energy bill further.

As part of his work at the Carbon Trust – a UK-based organisation that advises small companies, multinationals and governments on how best to save energy and reduce carbon emissions – Govindji runs the Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) project. IEEA brings together trade associations, manufacturers, equipment suppliers and tech start-ups.

One area of focus for the IEEA is industrial laundries, which wash massive amounts of hotel linen, work clothes and health-sector garments. It found that significant energy savings can be secured through the use of heat recovery, humidity and temperature controls on tumblers, as well as better fabrics and low-temperature washing methods. In another study of the clay-brick sector, the IEEA identified 19 technologies that could cut brickmakers’ energy use, including kiln exhaust heat recovery, reduced airflow and co-firing with synthetic gas.

Boasting an average energy consumption saving of 29 per cent for the 14 industry sectors the IEEA covers, the group’s design recommendations can clearly have a major impact on industrial sustainability.

Will this advice be heeded? According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the answer is yes. In a recent survey, it found that 75 per cent of manufacturers believe energy efficiency will be critical to profitability in the next 20 years.

Facilitating this transition will be the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), a term used to describe the growth in the number of industrial and household devices that can be connected to the web.

The IoT has already led to the development of intelligent, networked pumps, valves and compressors, modular components and cloud-based supercomputing capabilities for the factory floor – devices that have brought about considerable cost and energy savings. IoT technologies have, for instance, allowed mining company Rio Tinto to save more than USD300 million from its energy bills per year, and Facebook to slash energy usage at its data centres by 38 per cent. With results like these, it is no surprise that 25 per cent of global manufacturers are introducing this wireless technology, with more than 80 per cent of them expected to embed IoT into their businesses by 2025.

Many of the energy-saving measures in industry are also being applied in the home, and for good reason: the residential sector is responsible for 18 per cent of global energy consumption.

Solar panels adorn many residential roofs, while triple-glazed windows and insulation stop heat from seeping out of rooms and smart meters keep energy costs as low as possible.

Few people, however, think much about the efficiency of their appliances, often giving little more than a cursory glance at the energy-ratings label.

Enter Ayyoub Momen of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, who wants to revolutionise how we dry clothes. His idea came when he saw ultrasonic dehumidifiers using piezoelectric transducers, devices which convert energy generated from solid materials into another form.

“The high frequency of these transducers atomises water to produce a fog or steam of cold water,” he explains. “I thought if it can atomise water, why can’t we use the same concept to dry clothes mechanically?”

When Momen placed a small piece of fabric on one of these transducers, the results amazed him – without heating, the fabric dried in 14 seconds and the power input to the system was three to five times lower than with conventional techniques.

With domestic clothes dryers consuming about 1 per cent of all energy in the US, Momen is keen to develop his invention, and is currently working with conglomerate GE to scale up and eventually commercialise the technology.

“One idea is to design a box so that you could take an item of clothing out of the washing machine and throw it on top of a matrix of piezo transducers, then sandwich them so you can do both your drying and ironing in a matter of minutes,” he explains.

It is one thing to redesign appliances that waste energy, it is quite another to apply the same principles using furniture. Raphaël Ménard and Jean-Sébastien Lagrange are doing just that with their ZEF Table.

Hidden between the table’s plain wood underside and a folded sheet of anodised aluminium lies a phase-change material (PCM). Acting like a thermal sponge, the PCM absorbs heat generated by people and the sun when it is warm and reemits the heat when the room is colder. According to the designers, the ZEF Table could reduce the energy required for heating and cooling buildings by a respective 60 per cent and 30 per cent.

The ZEF Table is the first design to come out of the ZEF Program, an initiative that aims to tackle energy efficiency via innovative furniture design.

“On the scale of an entire building, energy efficiency is capital intensive and requires a lot of time,” says Ménard. “With furniture the effect is not as big, but a tiny investment can yield huge benefits.”

What each of these relatively simple designs shows is that changing how we carry out humdrum activities can have as big an impact on our environment as grand, publicly funded projects.

As Ménard suggests, when it comes to smart design, there are few ‘no-go’ areas.

“We’re still dreaming about making other furniture… maybe even a bath – when you take a bath or shower there’s huge heat loss, which is absolutely criminal not to recycle”.