Eficiência energética em indústria alimentícia

Abstract

Energy Efficiency is an increasingly necessary topic in all productive sectors, especially in industries, which represent most of the world's energy consumption. The theme concerns the implementation of actions in favor of the conservation of electric energy and the resources spent to generate it, focusing on using a smaller amount of energy for the same (or larger) amount of production. Such initiatives contribute a lot to reduce companies' costs, in addition to reducing their impact on the environment, thus being a very attractive topic when it comes to achieving corporate goals in terms of sustainability and business expenses. In this work, opportunities to improve the efficiency in the use of electric energy in an industrial plant in the food sector will be investigated through the analysis of the operation of electric motors applied in pumps, fans, exhausters and air compressors, focusing on how operation costs and greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced. This analysis makes use of technical data collected in the field, calculations of potential reduction in energy consumption by the equipments, calculations of payback time and calculations of potential reduction in the emission of polluting gases. The expected result was obtained, as it was possible to observe that several equipments could be operating more efficiently, in order to bring gains to the company. It is concluded, therefore, that studies in Energy Efficiency are beneficial in all areas of energy use and should be adopted as an essential part of industrial production control.