(630g) Challenges and Opportunities for Enhancing Exergy Efficiency of Industrial Sectors in Developing Economies – Insight From India's Growth

Given that the development of emerging economies is invariably accompanied by an increase in energy and resource consumption, goals of sustainable development require a parallel increase in resource efficiency.   This talk will focus on the trends and opportunities for enhancing the energy and material efficiency of industrial sectors in India.  It uses the approach of exergy analysis since it has been found to be an appropriate measure for resource accounting.  Studies on industrial sectors have been carried out for several economies and the resulting insight can be used for identifying opportunities for enhancing resource use and reducing environmental impact.  The aim of this work is to understand the metabolism of Industry sector of India as it has evolved from a controlled to a more open free market economy, and its implications for sustainable development.  We analyzed various industries in India on the basis of, resource consumption and environmental pollution.  We estimate second law efficiencies for various industries in India, including Chemical, Iron and steel, Fertilizer, cement, sugar and others.  We also estimate the efficiency of the India's industry sector as a whole.  Trends of resource consumption and its conversion into useful work are analyzed using exergy analysis and the results are compared with those of other developing and developed economies.  In addition, using techniques of network analysis, opportunities for enhancing exergy efficiency are identified.

Knowledge of prior work

A number of efforts have been undertaken to apply exergy analysis to industrial production processes. These studies presented exergy accounts for individual process stages, in order to identify major losses and evaluate the potential for further technical improvements in the processes. Exergy efficiency captures the degree to which energy inputs are converted into useful work [3]. Exergy analysis provides insights not available via other methods, especially for identifying unit operations with the greatest potential for improvement [2]. Industrial sector in India have been compared and analyzed on the basis of efficiency or resource conversion in different industries. Most of the existing research on thermodynamic analysis of industry mainly accounts for fossil fuel consumption and its conversion to useful work. Few studies have been conducted using exergy assessment of industries that takes in to account fuel, non-fuel minerals resources. In this study we have analyzed the industries on the basis of fuel and non-fuel resource consumption and emissions.

Research method

In this work, conversion and utilization of all natural resources including energy and materials are described in terms of exergy flow in various Industries in India. Exergy utilization trends and efficiencies for various industries are

analyzed and compared with those of other studies. Exergy losses in transformation of material resources and in conversion of various forms of energy into useful work are described in detail.

Results and discussion

This work provides insight into areas where major improvements are required to enhance resource efficiency in the various industries. Effects of factors such as increasing consumption and depletion of resource quality on overall efficiency are demonstrated. Results of this work can play an important role in devising the energy policy for any developing nation.