Operations & Maintenance Best Practices - A Guide to Achieving Operational Efficiency (Release 3)

This guide highlights operations and maintenance programs targeting energy and water efficiency that are estimated to save 5% to 20% on energy bills without a significant capital investment. The purpose of this guide is to provide you, the Operations and Maintenance (O&M)/Energy manager and practitioner, with useful information about O&M management, technologies, energy and water efficiency, and cost-reduction approaches. To make this guide useful and to reflect your needs and concerns, the authors met with O&M and Energy managers via Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) workshops. In addition, the authors conducted extensive literature searches and contacted numerous vendors and industry experts. The information and case studies that appear in this guide resulted from these activities. It needs to be stated at the outset that this guide is designed to provide information on effective O&M as it applies to systems and equipment typically found at Federal facilities. This guide is not designed to provide the reader with step-by-step procedures for performing O&M on any specific piece of equipment. Rather, this guide first directs the user to the manufacturer's specifications and recommendations. In no way should the recommendations in this guide be used in place of manufacturer's recommendations. The recommendations in this guide are designed to supplement those of the manufacturer, or, as is all too often the case, provide guidance for systems and equipment for which all technical documentation has been lost. As a rule, this guide will first defer to the manufacturer's recommendations on equipment operation and maintenance

DOE/Industrial Technologies Program DOE Award Number DE-FG36-05GO15099 Plant Wide Energy Efficiency Assessment Pilgrims Pride Corporation – Mt Pleasant Facility

The U. S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industrial Technologies Program (ITP), through Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is supporting plant wide energy efficiency assessments that will lead to substantial improvements in industrial efficiency, waste reduction, productivity, and global competitiveness in industries identified in ITP’s Industries of the Future. The stated goal of the assessments is to develop a comprehensive strategy at manufacturing locations that will significantly increase plant productivity, profitability, and energy efficiency, and reduce environmental emissions. ITP awarded a contract to Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation to conduct a plant wide energy efficiency assessment for their Mt Pleasant Facility in Mt Pleasant, Texas. Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation is the largest poultry company in the U.S. and Mexico producing nearly 9 billion pounds of poultry per year. Pilgrim's Pride products are sold to foodservice, retail and frozen entrée customers. Pilgrim's Pride owns and operates 37 chicken processing plants (34 in the U.S. and three in Mexico), 12 prepared foods plants and one turkey processing plant. Thirty-five feed mills and 49 hatcheries support these plants. Pilgrim's Pride is ranked number 382 on 2006's FORTUNE 500 list and net sales were $7.4 billion. In Mt. Pleasant, Texas, Pilgrim's Pride operates one of the largest prepared foods plants in the United States, with the capability of producing 2,000 different products and the capacity to turn out more than 7 million pounds of finished goods per week. The facility is divided into distinct departments: East Kill, West Kill, Prepared Foods, Protein Conversion, Wastewater Treatment, and Truck Shop. Facility processes include killing, eviscerating, refrigeration, baking, frying, and protein conversion. Pilgrim’s Pride formed a team to complete the plant wide energy efficiency assessment. The scope of work for this project was to: provide the analysis of departmental energy use, identify areas for detailed analysis, perform a detailed analysis for several of the opportunities identified, and support the development of an energy strategy for the facility. The team consisted of Pace Global Energy Services, LLC; Hudson Technologies Company; Rocky Research, Inc.; and W.J. Turpish and Associates. The project used a systematic approach to complete a plant-wide energy efficiency assessment at the Mt Pleasant Facility. Major energy consuming equipment and processes were determined and opportunities for high annual savings potential were targeted for further evaluation. Exhibit 1 below summarizes the major savings opportunities at the site. The total energy savings represent 14% of the energy consumed on site on an MMBtu basis, with 12% of total energy savings achievable in projects with less than a two year payback. Pace Global Energy Services, LLC of Fairfax, Virginia provided the analysis of departmental energy use, identification of areas for detailed analysis, and support for the development of an energy strategy for the facility. Hudson Technologies Company analyzed the combustion and steam systems to identify opportunities for economic heat recovery and improvement in boiler operations. Rocky Research, Inc analyzed the refrigeration systems and W.J. Turpish and Associates reviewed the cooling towers and evaporative condensers

SET2023 : 20th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies 15th to 17th August 2023, Nottingham, UK: Sustainable Energy Technologies 2023 Conference Proceedings. Volume 1

Papers #1 to #100 presented at SET 2023 Conferenc

Strategic Energy Management within Hospitals: Barriers to Energy Efficiency and the Impact of Design Margins

The original focus of the thesis looked at the barriers to effective energy management within the context of UK NHS Hospitals. As the research progressed, the overdesign of hospital building service systems emerged as a potential barrier that was considered in more detail, ultimately becoming a key focus of the research. The research revealed multiple barriers to energy efficiency; some direct, such as financial constraints, organisational limitations and poor data, and some indirect barriers, such as those leading to building services overdesign. Oversizing of building service systems, such as heating cooling and ventilation systems has a direct impact on building energy performance and operational efficiency as oversized systems are incapable of working at their optimal efficiency point. The resultant excessive consumption affects Government’s commitment of a ‘net zero’ Carbon position by 2040. Oversizing also leads to increased capital and ongoing maintenance and repair costs and redirects funds from patient care. This thesis addresses several research gaps on multiple levels. Whilst literature relating to energy management and its barriers is well documented in regard to private sector organisations, this is not the case for NHS hospitals. Literature relating to building services oversizing is also very limited, as is literature on design margins and oversizing within the healthcare context. The tensions between the need for resilience in hospitals and energy efficiency is also not identified in the literature. This thesis therefore aims to answer a number of research questions – what are the barriers to energy efficiency in hospitals? What is the evidence of oversizing? What are the causes of building services overdesign? And, how can oversizing in building services be mitigated? A multifaceted mixed methods approach has been adopted for the research of this thesis, whereby, a combination of detailed hospital case studies, supplementary interviews, research verification workshops, system modelling and elements of action research have been undertaken. The thesis is built on three in-depth case studies relating to general hospital energy management, boiler and chiller upgrades. The research has identified a number of key findings. A significant factor to the oversizing issue is the excessive and uncoordinated design margins, that are applied during the various specification, design and installation stages of building service projects for a variety of reasons. The thesis categorises and describes the various types of margins that are applied during a building services design and the potential rational for their inclusion. It argues that care must be taken when applying margins; ensuring cumulative effects do not undermine the ability of systems to be energy efficient. Other contributing factors to the oversizing issue include a lack of communication and transparency across the various project stakeholder groups, whereby design choices and assumptions made during an early phase of a project design are not then necessarily passed on to stakeholders during later project phases. Specific project stakeholder requirements and relationships are explored and analysed in detail to determine the various influences upon the design options chosen and the decision-making process that led to the over-dimensioned plant and equipment. A major cause of inappropriate sizing is the lack of requirements information such as energy demand profiles and the use of vague and unreliable data for initial project requirements. The impact of these factors on system performance and cost, and how these can impede on a hospital building's ability to meet energy efficiency and carbon reduction targets are analysed and discussed in detail. The thesis emphasises the need to develop robust processes that capture the scope and rationale for the margins applied, to communicate project assumptions and stakeholder requirements in a clear and unambiguous format and to develop systems for improved data capture and analysis. The development of flexible and alternative design solutions that apply diversity principles, such as different backup systems to provide resilience rather than the traditional ‘like-for-like’ redundancy solutions, are also explored and discussed in detail. The thesis highlights a clear lack of systemic thinking during the specification, design and installation phases of building service systems whereby better processes, procedures and communications are necessary throughout the entire design process

New approaches to the detection of echinocandin resistance in Candida glabrata in clinical diagnostic laboratories

Candidaemia is widely reported as the fourth most common form of bloodstream infection worldwide. Reports of cases of candidaemia whilst patients are in receipt of antifungal therapy are increasing, and this is especially relevant as prescribing practices change and develop. Given the elevation of echinocandin antifungal agents as first line treatment options over triazole agents and the use of echinocandin antifungal agents as prophylactic agents, it is important to maintain awareness of the potential difficulties surrounding emergent antifungal resistance.This study has designed and created a suitable assay for the specific detection of FKS gene mutations in Candida glabrata to indicate resistance to echinocandin antifungal agents using a pyrosequencing-based platform in the clinical diagnostic laboratory. There exists the potential for this rapid molecular detection system to be used as a screening tool which would help provide clinicians with essential information required to make appropriate and accurate therapeutic decisions for the management of bloodstream infections. This assay allows the reporting of these results within 4 hours of isolation greatly improving reporting times in the clinical laboratory.This study has also attempted to demonstrate the potential of proteomic approaches, using LC MS/MS and MALDI-TOF MS, to indicate antifungal resistance as demonstrated by C. glabrata with the echinocandin antifungal agents, by the identification of proteins, the changing patterns of protein presence, absence or relative abundance. This study has solely focused on using techniques that are realistically accessible to a diagnostic microbiology laboratory to maintain a true clinical impact. No readily identifiable or reproducible patterns were found, however the importance of continuing to adapt and modify the capabilities of the modern clinical diagnostic laboratory in an era of increasing antimicrobial resistance is highlighted. This study also provided data to support the continual low level of echinocandin resistance prevalent in C. glabrata in the United Kingdom

Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving Opportunities for the Pharmaceutical Industry. An ENERGY STAR Guide for Energy and Plant Managers

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry consumes almost $1 billion in energy annually. Energy efficiency improvement is an important way to reduce these costs and to increase predictable earnings, especially in times of high energy price volatility. There are a variety of opportunities available at individual plants in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner. This Energy Guide discusses energy efficiency practices and energy efficient technologies that can be implemented at the component, process, system, and organizational levels. A discussion of the trends, structure, and energy consumption characteristics of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is provided along with a description of the major process steps in the pharmaceutical manufacturing process. Expected savings in energy and energy-related costs are given for many energy efficiency measures, based on case study data from real-world applications in pharmaceutical and related facilities worldwide. Typical measure payback periods and references to further information in the technical literature are also provided, when available. The information in this Energy Guide is intended to help energy and plant managers reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner while meeting regulatory requirements and maintaining the quality of products manufactured. At individual plants, further research on the economics of the measures?as well as their applicability to different production practices?is needed to assess potential implementation of selected technologies