Book Description

United States industry consumed 32.5 Quads (34,300 PJ) of energy during 2003, which was 33.1% of total U.S. energy consumption (EIA 2003 Annual Energy Review). The U.S. industrial complex yields valuable goods and products. Through its manufacturing processes as well as its abundant energy consumption, it supports a multi-trillion dollar contribution to the gross domestic product and provides millions of jobs in the U.S. each year. Industry also yields waste products directly through its manufacturing processes and indirectly through its energy consumption. These waste products come in two forms, chemical and thermal. Both forms of waste have residual energy values that are not routinely recovered. Recovering and reusing these waste products may represent a significant opportunity to improve the energy efficiency of the U.S. industrial complex. This report was prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Technologies Program (DOE-ITP). It analyzes the opportunity to recover chemical emissions and thermal emissions from U.S. industry. It also analyzes the barriers and pathways to more effectively capitalize on these opportunities. A primary part of this analysis was to characterize the quantity and energy value of the emissions. For example, in 2001, the industrial sector emitted 19% of the U.S. greenhouse gases (GHG) through its industrial processes and emitted 11% of GHG through electricity purchased from off-site utilities. Therefore, industry (not including agriculture) was directly and indirectly responsible for emitting 30% of the U.S. GHG. These emissions were mainly comprised of carbon dioxide (CO2), but also contained a wide-variety of CH4 (methane), CO (carbon monoxide), H2 (hydrogen), NMVOC (non-methane volatile organic compound), and other chemicals. As part of this study, we conducted a survey of publicly available literature to determine the amount of energy embedded in the emissions and to identify technology opportunities to capture and reuse this energy. As shown in Table E-1, non-CO2 GHG emissions from U.S. industry were identified as having 2180 peta joules (PJ) or 2 Quads (quadrillion Btu) of residual chemical fuel value. Since landfills are not traditionally considered industrial organizations, the industry component of these emissions had a value of 1480 PJ or 1.4 Quads. This represents approximately 4.3% of the total energy used in the United States Industry.