Energy Analysis within Industrial Hydraulics and Correspondent Solar PV System Design

Abstract: Energy efficiency and renewable energy use are two main priorities leading to industrialsustainability nowadays according to European Steel Technology Platform (ESTP). Modernizationefforts can be done by industries to improve energy consumptions of the production lines.These days, steel making industrial applications are energy and emission intensive. It wasestimated that over the past years, energy consumption and corresponding CO2 generation hasincreased steadily reaching approximately 338.15 parts per million in august 2010 [1]. These kindsof facts and statistics have introduced a lot of room for improvement in energy efficiency forindustrial applications through modernization and use of renewable energy sources such as solarPhotovoltaic Systems (PV).The purpose of this thesis work is to make a preliminary design and simulation of the solarphotovoltaic system which would attempt to cover the energy demand of the initial part of thepickling line hydraulic system at the SSAB steel plant. For this purpose, the energy consumptions ofthis hydraulic system would be studied and evaluated and a general analysis of the hydraulic andcontrol components performance would be done which would yield a proper set of guidelinescontributing towards future energy savings.The results of the energy efficiency analysis showed that the initial part of the pickling linehydraulic system worked with a low efficiency of 3.3%. Results of general analysis showed thathydraulic accumulators of 650 liter size should be used by the initial part pickling line system incombination with a one pump delivery of 100 l/min. Based on this, one PV system can deliverenergy to an AC motor-pump set covering 17.6% of total energy and another PV system can supplya DC hydraulic pump substituting 26.7% of the demand. The first system used 290 m2 area of theroof and was sized as 40 kWp, the second used 109 m2 and was sized as 15.2 kWp.It was concluded that the reason for the low efficiency was the oversized design of the system.Incremental modernization efforts could help to improve the hydraulic system energy efficiency andmake the design of the solar photovoltaic system realistically possible. Two types of PV systemswhere analyzed in the thesis work. A method was found calculating the load simulation sequencebased on the energy efficiency studies to help in the PV system simulations. Hydraulicaccumulators integrated into the pickling line worked as energy storage when being charged by thePV system as well.