Plant Operations and Wasted Energy

Your link asks me for a login and password.

???

Same here. Could not see it.

However if I just see your description, I for one do not see it as funny, it is true.

The wastages in any manufacturing plant is really high, even in the best ones. The principles of 3M (not the company the Mura - Muda Muri) 5S etc all try to reduce these wastages and may be the reduction in the wastages can be renamed as capturing the waste energy. Looks nice and appealing.

Just for an example, we try to wait, creata a batch to fill the oven and that way reduce the number of charges, that does save electricity. Similar things happen on optimised batch sizes.

looks like they do energy audits for a fee they will analyze your use and tell you where there is waste and what to do to upgrade to a more efficient operation. Not free energy.

I was also unable to login to that site.

Waste energy recovery is not new. When I started work as a young process engineer in a crude oil refinery, the company embarked a program called "Energy Conservation" where we studied how much heat is wasted and the method of recovery. That program resulted in some plant modifications. This happened around 1978.

All new oil refineries, chemical and petrochemical plants are currently energy efficient. The remaining or residual waste energy is not economical to recover at current energy price but it may be economically feasible in the future. The residual waste energy is classified as "Low Level Energy". This low level energy is still a lot.