Evidence on rising global temperature, melting of ice caps, and withdrawal of glaciers
brings attentions to the enhancement of energy efficiency in energy intensive industries. Having a
realistic comparison between one plant and the best practice technology (BPT) in operation in the field
helps significantly to distinguish and diagnose the potentials where measures towards energy efficiency
improvement would be applicable. In this regard, for manufacturing industries, one of the most widely
used energy benchmarking tools is the Energy Benchmark Curve. An energy benchmark curve plots the
efficiency of plants as a function of the total production volume from all similar plants or as a function
of the total number of plants that operate at that level of efficiency or worse. This paper reviews the
methodology through which the benchmark curve is obtained for a specific industry followed by a
comparison of energy intensity for the iron and steel industry among China and the US. According to
the international energy benchmark curve for the iron and steel industry, the savings potentials per ton
of crude steel for the US. and China have been respectively 4.1 and 7.1 gigajoule comparing with the
BPT in the field. Finally, an overview over certain measures to enhance efficiency of such plants is
presented.
This paper presents a numerical study of the thermal performance of fins mounted on the bottom wall of a horizontal channel and cooled with either pure water or an Al2O3-water nanofluid. The bottom wall of the channel is heated at a constant temperature and cooled by mixed convection of laminar flow at a relatively low temperature. The results of the numerical simulation indicate that the heat transfer rate of fins is significantly affected by the Reynolds number (Re) and the thermal conductivity of the fins. The influence of the solid volume fraction on the increase of heat transfer is more noticeable at higher values of the Re.