Collaboration In West Virginia Yields Energy Saving Benefits

When it comes to energy, industry must play a big part if we are to have a future with a lower carbon footprint, less global warming and more efficiency.

Industry partnering with governmental agencies and universities can work. An example of a working partnership making a difference is Industries of the Future-West Virginia (IOF-WV).  IOF-WV grew out of collaboration between West Virginia University (WVU), the West Virginia Division of Energy (WVDE) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Everything the team does is a collaborative effort to develop energy-saving, productivity-enhancing technologies and strategies for energy-intensive industries such as aluminum, steel, metal casting, glass, chemicals, polymers, wood/forest products, and mining. Over the past ten years, 45 competitively funded collaborative projects have been put in place, 60 industry partners have been cost-share partners, 26 professors and numerous students have worked on projects, three national laboratories have participated, and over 200 proposals have been written involving more that 200 partners and co-PIs.

The IOF-WV program works with West Virginia's aluminum, steel, glass, chemical/polymer, wood/forest products, metal casting and crosscutting technology industry sectors. West Virginia's diverse range of basic industries and raw materials make the state an ideal laboratory for testing new technologies and manufacturing business models.  The IOF-WV’s goals and objectives are:

• Develop alliances that work to improve energy and resource efficiency and productivity of energy-intensive manufacturing and production companies.

• Through faculty researchers, who have the expertise and commitment, conduct projects that help energy-intensive companies become more energy efficient and competitive.

• Develop innovative projects and technologies that help energy-intensive companies increase efficiency, reduce waste and increase productivity. When West Virginia first became involved with the IOF program in 1997, Denise Swink was deputy assistant secretary for Industrial Technologies and director of the OIT. At her suggestion, West Virginia became the first state to initiate a state-level IOF program. Since then, as many as 30 other states established some form of the IOF program

With approximately 65 companies having annual energy purchases exceeding $2 million, energy has become the critical issue for many of West Virginia's materials manufacturers. Although coal-based electricity is relatively inexpensive in West Virginia, aluminum companies operate on extremely thin margins and are continually threatened by power cost increases of just a few mils. Dramatically increasing energy prices have been devastating to the chemical, glass, and metals industries that demand large quantities of heat and/or use natural gas as a process raw material.

The IOF-WV approach is to identify and prioritize the needs of West Virginia's energy intensive companies and to form interdisciplinary project teams and alliances to develop proposals and seek resources to conduct essential projects.

One project that yielded sizable benefits was the Pechiney Rolled Products plant in Ravenswood, West Virginia. Since aluminum casting and rolling are energy-intensive processes, this was the perfect place to make a difference. 

Previous energy assessments at the plant had identified the melting/casting, ingot reheating, and rolling operations as the primary energy consumers in the plant. When the IOF-WV project was completed it had identified annual energy savings of 460,000 MMBtu and 9.6 million kWh and an annual cost savings of $2.5 million. The project team found opportunities to reduce annual CO2 production by 69 million pounds.