During an ADPI webinar, Ryan Mertes, who leads In-Plant and Manufacturing solutions, and Des Cooling, Director of Plant Integration for Sustainability, answered questions about how Ever.Ag helps facilities create savings and achieve their sustainability goals. They discussed plant complexity, previous successful endeavors, timelines of projects, and more for adding Energy Manager into a plant’s system architecture.
Question: Do you look at the entire totality of the plant or just part of the plant?
It depends on what the site wants. Generally, we will map out everything if we’re doing a full plant. However, if a site only wants to map a specific building, we will get the infrastructure in place, establish communication, and collect the data only from that area.
Some organizations will do a section of their plant as proof of concept. If they are pleased with the results, then they will roll it out to the rest of the facility or other sites they have.
Question: How long does it take to review and understand each part of the process to take action?
It generally takes between 12 and 16 weeks for small and medium plants to receive, analyze, review, and make sense of the data.
When considering the timeline, it’s important to remember that this process requires active engagement from the facility and the process team to achieve success.
Question: How long does the entire project take for large and small plants?
As stated in the previous question, phase 1 typically takes 3 to 4 months, which includes getting your data connected and beginning to receive insights. The time needed for future phases depends on your plant and its data.
Question: What type of plant is the most challenging to map out?
In addition to dairy, distilleries, and breweries, we work with complex biotech facilities that perform ultra-filtration, micro-filtration, diafiltration, and aqueous conjugation. Although the biotech facilities have the most complexities, the key with all plants is communicating with the devices, establishing the data source, working with the site, and mapping out the information we receive.
Additionally, the essential pieces of kit, pumps, valves, and heat exchangers that drive our manufacturing process are the same for all facilities. Because of that and our considerable experience, we are confident our work can achieve positive results in any plant.
Question: Can you describe one of the plant projects? How much progress has been made, and what are some specific examples?
Throughout our projects, we’ve made substantial progress on many plants and created many savings. In one of the facilities we worked on, we found that items released nitrogen into the atmosphere during their CIP and blanketing processes.
Another example is from a tank farm where they used chilled water. We could see that the back of the tank farm consumed far more energy than the front. After we mapped it out, we found that the chilled water had heated up by the time it reached the back of the farm. Because of that, the tank farm consumed extra energy trying to cool down the back vessels. From those findings, the facility and the tank farm reduced their overall consumption of nitrogen and energy, respectively.
Question: How is water factored into these models? Are you strictly considering consumption savings, or are energy/emission implications also considered?
We look at everything, not just water. We look at steam, compressed air, water, electricity, nitrogen, and natural gas. We also consider temperature profiles, temperature transmitters, pressure transmitters, control valve positions, motors, and more.
We combine all our downstream devices and group them into our meter levels. Once we have the information coming in, we can start finding potential savings by identifying losses.
Question: How are water savings reported? Across what scope does water fall?
Water savings report into water metrics that people send out. If a plant needs to reduce its water consumption by 10%, we will establish a new baseline and target. Then, we will reduce consumption where it’s currently being used and identified.
Water doesn’t fall into a scope one or scope two characteristic. It’s back into your ESG and your social government’s environmental side.
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