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research report

Continuous training program: process engineering for decarbonization of the Swiss industry

Florez Orrego, Daniel Alexander  
•
Dardor, Dareen Zuhir Omar  
•
Ribeiro Domingos, Meire Ellen Gorete  
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April 30, 2024

Cross-cutting and sector-specific measures will be necessary to decarbonize the industrial sites, which include the improvement of component-wise energy efficiency, heat and mass recovery intensification, and integration of more advanced energy technologies. However, industrial plants are generally not aware of the upgrading potential due to limited technical information about the existing and newly developed processes, or simply due to the lack of motivation, time or skilled personnel to conduct thorough energy audits. Limited financial resources is also a constraint, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. Thus, only few companies that could afford in-depth energy audits have been hitherto able to deploy pathways that improved their competitiveness, allowing them to reduce the energy bill and minimize their environmental burden. In this regard, a more inclusive and sustainable energy transition will require the formation of highly qualified engineers within firms to effectively implement the complex technical and technological improvements required by the industry. They will need to be well-versed in energy audit, process modelling and design, and energy integration techniques (e.g. pinch analysis), whereas having an excellent knowledge of decarbonization technologies and their application. To this end, this Continuing Education Program has been developed to synthesize the principal energy integration and decarbonization concepts and support engineering decisions with advanced calculation and reporting tools. Although various decision-supporting methods and tools already exist, they are rather dispersed, barely used or not available in open access. For that reason, aside from the training course, the project provides advanced decision-supporting tools to be used by the future decarbonization engineers for the Swiss industry. Unlike other available tools, the developed tool can be tailor-made to meet the needs of specific industrial sectors and can be adapted to sectorial applications. Three work packages on energy audits, utility supply and decarbonization superstructure design have been set for the preparation of the training program. First work package (WP1) focused on energy audits, composed of the description of process flowsheet, definition of the mass and energy needs, documentation of the process constraints and the validation of results together with industrial partners. Selected enterprises belonging to strategical economic sectors for Switzerland, such as distillery, malting, tanning, explosives, dairy, brewery, as well as aluminium and watchmaking have been involved in the demonstration of the versatility of the methods and the tools proposed. Due to confidentiality agreements, audits are only briefly presented, but two case studies on brewery and dairy processes are analyzed more in depth. The second (WP2) and third (WP3) working packages focused on building and documenting the energy integration tool and a database of the energy technologies and decarbonization models needed to assess the decarbonization pathways for the Swiss industry. Finally, synergies between patronal associations, universities, industries and other actors have been identified, and the contact details are provided at the end of this report. The products developed in this research project will be used in the recently launched Master of Advanced Studies of the École Polytechnic Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The open source code of the developed tool and database can be consulted in the tool repository: https://gitlab.epfl.ch/ipese/mas/masbook/-/tree/integrationreport

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Type
research report
Report number

Suisse Energy Final report April 2024

Author(s)
Florez Orrego, Daniel Alexander  

EPFL

Dardor, Dareen Zuhir Omar  

EPFL

Ribeiro Domingos, Meire Ellen Gorete  

EPFL

Gouveia Braz, Ana Catarina  

EPFL

Corre, Soline Florence Marie  

EPFL

Maréchal, François  

EPFL

Fuerbringer, Jean-Marie  
Meyer, Samuel
Astour, Antoine
Gahn, Jakob

Technical University of Munich

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Date Issued

2024-04-30

Total of pages

94

Editorial or Peer reviewed

NON-REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
SCI-STI-FM-A  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Swiss Federal Office of Energy

SuisseEnergie

Available on Infoscience
August 2, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/240549
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