From agriculture to aerospace and from high tech to bio tech, California boasts a highly diverse industrial sector. Together, these industries comprise the world's tenth largest economy, and they use 28 percent of the state's electricity and 46 percent of its natural gas.
The diversity of this sector is a significant challenge when it comes to energy efficiency, since finding "one size fits all" solutions is almost impossible. In fact, most technologies must be customized to an industry sector-or even a specific plant-to accommodate unique processes, timing, and equipment size requirements. Nonetheless, Emerging Technologies is finding and assessing intriguing solutions that can save energy, money, and resources for California's industrial leaders.
Find out how to get involved with energy efficiency in our state's highly diverse industrial sector. Host or participate in one of Emerging Technologies' pilot studies or invest in energy efficiency. Whether you run a massive production plant or a small technical laboratory, reducing your energy expenses is good for the environment and for your bottom line.
Food on the table, wine in the bottle
Agriculture and food processing present unique challenges and opportunities for industrial energy efficiency. A full 90 percent of California's agricultural energy expenditure is associated with water use. In fact, 80 percent of the total water pumped through the state is used to irrigate the 8 million acres of agricultural land. Thus, one of the keys to saving energy in the agricultural sector is saving water.
Emerging Technologies is assessing a variety of solutions that save energy in agriculture. Some of the latest technologies that show promise at shaving significant amounts of energy off industrial agricultural processes include electrodialysis for wine making, ThermoSorbers ™ in food processing plants, and mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) for the tomato and dairy industries.
An industrial revolution for industrial refrigeration
The U.S. refrigeration industry is under international pressure to replace 100 percent of ozone-depleting refrigerant compounds-the fluids that make refrigerators work-by 2040. Emerging Technologies is piloting a program at a large refrigeration storage and warehouse facility to assess the efficiency of carbon dioxide-based refrigeration systems and ammonia-based refrigeration systems.
Reconfiguring Data Centers
Ranging in size from one room to entire buildings, data centers house the computers and equipment that store and process all of the data that enables companies and other organizations to operate. Energy costs for data centers can be 100 times higher than that of typical buildings. Emerging Technologies has determined that modest changes to data center configurations increase reliability yet reduce the energy use of cooling systems by up to 45 percent, which translates to 10 to 15 percent overall energy savings per data center. Projects currently underway include evaluating airflow optimization technologies and power supply solutions.
Finding energy savings under the hood
Fume hoods keep laboratory workers safe by removing unwanted gasses through filters and exhaust fans. But in the process, they consume considerable electricity: one laboratory fume hood uses as much electricity as three homes. Emerging Technologies worked with a major bio technology company to determine the benefits of lowering fume hoods during peak demand events which often occur on hot summer afternoons. The study showed that each fume hood sash lowered reduced electricity demand by 1 kilowatt - the equivalent of turning off fifteen 60-watt lights all at once.