Energy Management Tools for Textile and Apparel Companies

Author: Ali Hasanbeigi, Ph.D.

Textile and apparel industry comprises a large number of plants that, together, consume a significant amount of energy which result in substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The following tools can help engineers and managers in textile and apparel companies to manage and reduce their energy use.

The link to each tool is provided in the Resources>Tools section of our website.

Textile- and Apparel-Specific Tools:

1. Energy Efficiency Assessment and Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction (EAGER) Tool for the Textile Industry. EAGER Textile tool developed by our director, Dr. Hasanbeigi, and allows you to evaluate the impact of selected energy efficiency measures for the textile industry by choosing the measures that you would likely introduce in your facility, or would like to evaluate for potential use. It is available in both English and Chinese.

2. SET tool: It is a self-assessment tool specific for textile manufacturing processes. It's developed under Energy Made-to-Measure platform.

3. Energy Distribution Support Tool (EDST): It can be used where energy audit data is not available, the tool estimates energy distribution throughout the various processes and auxiliaries. It also allows constant monitoring of consumption. It's developed under Energy Made-to-Measure platform.

4. Energy Management and Benchmark Tool (EMBT): It compares the energy consumption data with the production data. It generates energy efficiency indices and it reports on the dynamics of consumption. It's developed under Energy Made-to-Measure platform.

5. Self-Assessment Tool (SAT): It is an instrument for self-evaluation which allows companies to identify the most promising Best Practices for energy saving for the company. It's developed under Energy Made-to-Measure platform.

U.S. DOE Energy Assessment Tools:

1. MEASUR Tool: It is an integrated tool suite (MEASUR) to aid manufacturers in improving the efficiency of energy systems and equipment within a plant.

2. 50001 Ready Navigator Tool: It is an online guide that can assist you in putting an energy management system in place.

3. Energy Performance Indicator LITE (EnPI LITE) Tool: It is an online regression-based calculator for modeling energy performance at the facility level.

4. 50001 Ready Navigator: It is an online guide that can assist you in putting an energy management system in place. The Navigator has been developed by DOE to align with the structure and requirements of ISO 50001 Energy Management Systems.

5. Energy Footprint Tool: It can help manufacturing, commercial and institutional facilities to track their energy consumption, factors related to energy use, and significant energy end-use.

6. The Plant Energy Profiler Excel (PEPEx) Tool : It is an excel based software tool to help industrial plant managers identify how energy is being purchased and consumed at their plant and identify potential energy and cost savings.

7. Steam System Modeler Tool: The properties and equipment calculators in this tool allow the user to input the metrics of their system, generate a list of detailed steam specific steam properties, and test a variety of adjustments on individual equipment.

8. The Process Heating Assessment and Survey Tool (PHAST): It introduces methods to improve thermal efficiency of heating equipment. This tool helps industrial users survey process heating equipment that consumes fuel, steam, or electricity, and identifies the most energy-intensive equipment.
   MotorMaster+ Tool: It is designed for industrial energy coordinators, facility managers and engineers, plant electricians and maintenance staff, procurement personnel, and utility auditors who are interested in improving the energy efficiency of motor systems at industrial facilities.

9. AIRMaster+ Tool: Helps users analyze energy use and savings opportunities in manufacturing compressed air systems. Use AIRMaster+ to baseline existing and model future system operations improvements, and evaluate energy and dollar savings from many energy efficiency measures.

10. Pump System Assessment Tool (PSAT): This tool helps manufacturers assess the efficiency of pumping system operations. PSAT uses achievable pump performance data from Hydraulic Institute standards and motor performance data from the MotorMaster+ database to calculate potential energy and associated cost savings.

11. Fan System Assessment Tool (FSAT): This tool helps manufacturers quantify energy use and savings opportunities in manufacturing fan systems.

U.S. EPA Tool:

• Energy Tracking Tool: This tool will help you track your energy performance and meet your energy management goals easily. The tool will track your energy use, cost, and intensity, as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

The link to each tool is provided in the Resources>Tools section of our website.

Demand Response Potentials in the Textile Industry

Author: Ali Hasanbeigi, Ph.D.

Demand Response (DR) helps utilities to manage the peak electricity demand by temporarily shifting the demand on the consumer side instead of building new power plants to meet the short-time peak demand. On the other hand, customers use demand response to reduce their electrical cost using the time-of-use price signals. Nowadays, work is underway to automate the process using automated demand response (AutoDR).

In this post I will not get into the details of DR or AutoDR and rather discuss the DR potential in the manufacturing sector. I believe one of the main barriers to DR in manufacturing is that the DR potential in this sector is not well understood by utilities, companies and other parties involved.

Based on my experience on energy efficiency and demand side management in industry in the past 14 years, for a manufacturing sector or process to have a great potential for Demand Response (DR), it should have one or more of the four characteristics shown in the figure below.

Note: A bottleneck is a stage in a process that causes the entire process and the production rate of the final product to slow down.

Let me open this by giving a couple examples below from the textile industry:

There are many DR potential in the textile industry. The first example for the textile industry is in the yarn production process. One of the main process is called “spinning process” which uses different machines such as Ring frame, Open-end machines, etc. The spinning process has the following two DR-friendly characteristics:

1. It is a batch process

2. It is a bottleneck process. Often, intermediary products that are fed into spinning machines get lined up for hours on the plant floor waiting to be processed by spinning machines. Having a proper storage capacity will allow to store enough feeding product for spinning machines and shut down the previous process, which account for around 30%-40% of electricity demand of the entire yarn production plants, for few hours during the DR period.

Another significant potential for DR in the textile industry is in wet-processing plants. Wet-processing plants conduct preparation, dyeing, printing, and/or finishing of yarn and fabric and other textile products. Many batch processes exist in wet-processing plants. Also, several processes like dryer, Stenter, or batch dyeing machines can be bottleneck processes that provide DR opportunity. Often wet-processing plants work on several different orders and products; thus, proper production scheduling can provide great DR opportunity. To take advantage of this, there needs to be high level of coordination between different departments within a plant who are in charge of production planning, energy management, paying utility bills, etc. Figure below illustrate the concept of DR potential in production processes with batch processing, storage capacity and a bottleneck process.

To sum up, textile manufacturing sector is a complex and heterogeneous sector. Even within one industry subsector, there are completely different subsectors. However, there are great potentials for energy saving and Demand Response in the textile industry . More in-depth understanding of production processes and technologies and energy systems in the textile industry will allow us to tap into these potential.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any question. Also, don't forget to Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook to get the latest about our new blog posts, projects, and publications. Also see below our related publications and tools.

Some of our related publications are:

1.     Hasanbeigi, Ali; Price, Lynn; (2015). A Technical Review of Emerging Technologies for Energy and Water Efficiency and Pollution Reduction in the Textile Industry. Journal of Cleaner Production. DOI 10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.02.079.

2.     Hasanbeigi, Ali; Hasanabadi, Abdollah; Abdolrazaghi, Mohamad, (2012). Energy Intensity Analysis for Five Major Sub-Sectors of the Textile Industry. Journal of Cleaner Production 23 (2012) 186-194

3.     Hasanbeigi, Ali; Price, Lynn (2012). A Review of Energy Use and Energy Efficiency Technologies for the Textile Industry. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 16 (2012) 3648– 3665.

Infographic: Textile and Apparel Industry’s Energy and Water Consumption and Pollutions Profile

Author: Ali Hasanbeigi, Ph.D.

Although the textile and apparel industry is not considered an energy-intensive industry, it comprises a large number of plants that, together, consume a significant amount of energy which result in substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions too. 
The textile and apparel industry and especially textile wet-processing is one of the largest consumers of water in manufacturing and also one of the main producers of industrial wastewater. Since various chemicals are used in different textile processes like pre-treatment, dyeing, printing, and finishing, the textile wastewater contains many toxic chemicals which if not treated properly before discharging to the environment, can cause serious environmental damage.

With global population growth and the emergence of fast fashion, the worldwide textile and apparel production are increasing rapidly. In 2014, an average consumer bought 60% more clothing compared to that in 2000, but kept each garment only half as long.

The Infographic below shows the Textile and Clothing Industry’s Energy and Water Consumption and Pollutions Profile.

Don't forget to Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook to get the latest about our new blog posts, projects, and publications. Also see below our related publications and tools.

Some of our related publications and tools are:

1.     Hasanbeigi, Ali; Price, Lynn; (2015). A Technical Review of Emerging Technologies for Energy and Water Efficiency and Pollution Reduction in the Textile Industry. Journal of Cleaner Production. 

2.   Hasanbeigi, Ali (2013). Emerging Technologies for an Energy-Efficient, Water-Efficient, and Low-Pollution Textile Industry. Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. LBNL-6510E

3.     Hasanbeigi, Ali; Hasanabadi, Abdollah; Abdolrazaghi, Mohamad, (2012). Energy Intensity Analysis for Five Major Sub-Sectors of the Textile Industry. Journal of Cleaner Production 23 (2012) 186-194

4.     Hasanbeigi, Ali; Price, Lynn (2012). A Review of Energy Use and Energy Efficiency Technologies for the Textile Industry. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 16 (2012) 3648– 3665.

5.    Also, you can check out the Energy Efficiency Assessment and Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Tool for the Textile Industry (EAGER Textile), which I developed a few years ago while still working at LBNL. EAGER Textile tool allows users to conduct a simple techno-economic analysis to evaluate the impact of selected energy efficiency measures in a textile plant by choosing the measures that they would likely introduce in a facility, or would like to evaluate for potential use.