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Assessing Energy Efficiency in Processes of the Agri-Food Sector: From Delivery of Natural Resources to Finished Products

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Advances in Production Management Systems. Smart Manufacturing and Logistics Systems: Turning Ideas into Action (APMS 2022)

Abstract

The agri-food sector accounts for 26% of the EU energy consumption, where 28% of this energy belongs to natural resource processing. As multiple products are produced on the same line and numerous process steps are interrelated, the energy use in this industry is complex in general. Moreover, bottom-up data analysis of how much energy processes are used, and furthermore, why and where opportunities for improvements exist, are less prevalent. This paper proposes a methodology for estimating the energy consumption of the agri-food processing. The collection of real data from several industrial enterprises in Germany as part of research programs enabled an accurate assessment of energy consumption and savings.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and the Project Management Juelich (PtJ) for funding the projects “Increasing energy efficiency in production through digitization and AI” - ecoKI (funding code 03EN2047A) and “AI-supported platform for the assistance of production control for improving energy efficiency” - KIPro (funding code 03ET1265A).

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Correspondence to M. T. Alvela Nieto .

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Alvela Nieto, M.T., Thoben, KD. (2022). Assessing Energy Efficiency in Processes of the Agri-Food Sector: From Delivery of Natural Resources to Finished Products. In: Kim, D.Y., von Cieminski, G., Romero, D. (eds) Advances in Production Management Systems. Smart Manufacturing and Logistics Systems: Turning Ideas into Action. APMS 2022. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 664. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16411-8_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16411-8_15

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16411-8

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