processes
Article Energy Saving for Tissue Paper Mills by Energy-Efficiency Scheduling under Time-of-Use Electricity Tariffs
Zhiqiang Zeng 1, * , Xiaobin Chen 2 and Kaiyao Wang 1
1 Faculty of Intelligent Manufacturing, Wuyi University, Jiangmen 529020, China; wang.kaiyao@outlook.com 2 College of Chemical and Material Engineering, Quzhou University, Quzhou 324000, China; xbchen24264@163.com * Correspondence: zhiqiang.zeng@outlook.com Abstract: Environmental concerns and soaring energy prices have brought huge pressure of energy saving and emission reduction to tissue paper mills. Electricity is one of the main energy sources of tissue paper mills. The production characteristics of tissue paper mills make it easy to decrease energy cost by using time-of-use (TOU) electricity tariffs. This study investigates the bi-objective energy-efficiency scheduling of tissue paper mills under time-of-use electricity tariffs, the objectives of which are makespan and energy cost. First, considering the processing energy cost, setup energy cost, and transportation energy cost, an energy cost model of a tissue paper mill under TOU electricity tariffs is established. Second, the energy-efficiency scheduling model under TOU electricity tariffs is built based on the energy cost model. Finally, on the basis of decomposition and teaching– learning optimization, this study proposes a novel multi-objective evolutionary algorithm and further combined with the variable neighborhood search to solve the problem. The case study results demonstrate that our study of tissue paper mill energy saving is feasible, and the proposed method has better performance than the existing methods.
Keywords: tissue paper mill; energy saving; time-of-use electricity tariffs; multi-objective optimization
Citation: Zeng, Z.; Chen, X.; Wang, K. Energy Saving for Tissue Paper Mills by Energy-Efficiency Scheduling under Time-of-Use Electricity Tariffs. Processes 2021 , 9 , 274. https://doi.org/10.3390/ pr9020274
1. Introduction The paper industry is an energy-intensive industry. In 2019, its energy consumption reached 1483.2 trillion British thermal units (Btu), of which electricity consumption was 205.3 trillion Btu. [1]. At the same time, the carbon dioxide emissions of the paper industry reached 48 million tons in 2019, accounting for 4.45% of the total carbon dioxide emissions of the manufacturing industry [2]. Under the pressure from environmental degradation and rising energy costs, the papermaking industry is faced with huge energy-saving and emission reducing pressure. Studying the energy-efficiency scheduling under the time-of- use (TOU) electricity tariffs is of great significance for papermaking enterprises to improve energy efficiency. In general, one day can be divided into three periods based on the electricity demand, namely, the on-peak period, the mid-peak period, and the non-peak period. Due to the imbalance in the demand for electricity, waste will be generated in the off-peak or mid-peak periods, while the demand will exceed the supply during the on-peak period. To deal with this issue, the TOU pricing scheme is used to encourage users to use electricity in the mid-peak period and off-peak period, thus balancing the demand of electricity. In the production process, the electricity consumption of each job is different, indicating that the operation with high electricity consumption is arranged in off-peak or mid-peak periods and the operation with low electricity consumption is arranged in an on-peak period, so that the electricity cost can be decreased. The energy-efficiency scheduling under TOU electricity tariffs is based on above idea, which has attracted more attention in recent years.
Received: 8 December 2020 Accepted: 27 January 2021 Published: 31 January 2021
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Processes 2021 , 9 , 274. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9020274
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