ENERGY SAVING
Working together works
Energy saving is not about reducing energy usage. John Barker of Humidity Solutions explains.
E
nergy saving is often misunderstood: turn it off , turn it down, take it off the specifi cation. No doubt this will save energy in the immediate future. No heater, no
humidifi er no energy used – job done.
But very often the purpose of the machine is to improve performance – whether it be of people or product – and therefore surely the reason for introducing it is agreed and the investigation regarding energy saving must lead to a more educated calculation? One that considers all the consequences and doesn’t just look at the power used by an individual machine in isolation.
If your house has the back door open in mid-winter and your energy bills are going through the roof the solution is not to turn the boiler off as it is using too much power. The consequences would be negative to the people in the house and indeed some of the items in the house. The solution is to reduce the amount of air that you are heating to the smallest volume possible which in this case is to close the door to stop the attempt to heat the surrounding neighbourhood and confi ne the volume of air to the space you are using. Lower energy bills and a toasty warm room. The same argument can be made when it comes to conditioning the air in industrial and commercial buildings. Improving Performance
To heat, cool, humidify, dehumidify or fi lter is most energy 32 January 2021
effi cient when the smallest practical volume of air being conditioned is considered - assuming of course that the process used to provide these conditions in itself is the most effi cient of its type.
There will – inevitably – be some energy costs, but the trade-off is that potentially several other costs are consequently reduced.
For example labour costs that may have been required to remedy faults caused by not installing appropriate equipment – in the case of a cold store – time spent de-icing coils or removing ice formation from fl oors when a dehumidifi er is not employed.
Continuing with the example above, correct use of dehumidifi cation also reduces the risk of health and safety hazards, such as slip on ice build-up, thereby reducing injuries and consequent absence, complaints and claims or indeed compensation.
Energy costs incurred in providing a correct stable and controlled environment lead to increases in productivity in many industrial sites by improving effi ciency of machines and people, ensuring consistent quality of output and reducing wastage otherwise caused by fl uctuating conditions in product handling and process.
So how can air volume be managed to reduce energy and enable the potential benefi ts highlighted above?
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