Energy Performance in the Industry. Heat Exchangers and Process efficiency

In today's energy context, rising energy prices and the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels are forcing today's and tomorrow's industrial society to become increasingly efficient, both in terms of environmental impact and energy management. This last point, which is essential today, is directly linked to the economic and financial issues facing manufacturers, leading them to seek greater efficiency in their systems and processes, as well as to reduce their energy consumption, which has become essential.

The objective of energy performance through the control and rationalization of energy for greater efficiency involves in particular the optimization of the various technical organs and components of processes, and in particular heat exchangers, which are one of the major elements in energy processes and systems. Without question, heat exchangers play a vital and indispensable role in all thermal systems, whether for industrial use (chemicals, petrochemicals, iron and steel, food processing, power generation), for the automotive, aeronautics and aerospace industries, or for residential and commercial buildings. Indeed, it is generally agreed that over 90% of the thermal energy used in industrial processes passes through a heat exchanger at least once, making it a ubiquitous and de facto essential element of any industrial energy performance strategy.

Optimization of the heat exchanger component and its performance will in fact lead to optimization of the processes comprising this element, and in effect to an improvement in the energy performance of the overall system. However, the notion of energy performance, intimately linked between components and systems, is not always easy to grasp and define. However, it is necessary to characterize it in order to be able to influence it with a view to optimization, all the more so in view of the many uses and applications of heat exchangers.