Building an energy map for an industrial plant

[jon94]

Recently started an internship at a large chemical company where I have been tasked with building an energy map for our department that details all the major electricity, gas, compressed air and steam consumers. Unfortunately there are very few engineers in my department so I'm suffering from a lack of mentorship. Does anybody here have any resources they can recommend that cover this + reducing energy consumption. I can find plenty of books online on saving energy in a plant but nothing on how to get about mapping everything out. My knowledge of electricity isn't too great either as I am a chemical engineer. Many thanks

 

[jari001]

When you got the task, were you told why it needed to be done or how your work output would be used by others? You should ask to see if something like this was done before and if that was useful and/or ask the person that assigned the task to define the output required. Maybe others will correct me, but I don't think an "energy map" is a strictly defined thing that everyone makes the same way at every company.

At a high level, it seems to me you're constructing a mass and energy balance for an entire plant. Data gathering is your first task while you await clarification, so find existing design documents for equipment and processes (e.g. basis of design reports, utility flow diagrams), get plant trend data if there are instruments that are tracking usage (e.g. totalizing flow meters, load cells for vessels). If there are central utilities (e.g. main steam generation), there are likely dedicated groups to maintaining those utilities - talk to them about what you're doing to get some ideas as well.