Carbon Emissions

Link 51 commissioned the Carbon Trust to carry out an opportunities assessment at its premises in July 2007. The view was to provide broad recommendations of where energy savings can be made and the amount of expenditure, which can be reduced by these actions.

When all the prioritised measures are implemented the aggregated savings from the measures identified represent a 3.9% reduction in energy consumption and a 5.3% reduction in cost. The implementation of the measures will particularly contribute towards the Confederation of British Metal Forming Sector’s CCA targets.

The Assessment

Objectives of the Assessment

The objective of the visit was to produce a report highlighting important activities that the site needs to undertake to save both carbon dioxide and its associated expenditure.

The survey itself focused on the following principle areas, which were identified during the survey:

• Compressed Air Systems
• Motors and Drives
• Lighting
• Process Machinery
• General Good Practice
• Energy Awareness.

The areas of the sites under the survey were:

• Offices
• Manufacturing Plant
• Warehouse
• All Plant Rooms.

It was found that the Link 51 processes already incorporate several energy saving techniques, which demonstrated the companies underlying good attitude to energy use. The most significant of these were as follows:

Compressed Air – At all sites, compressed air usage is approached in a sensible manner with fixed speed screw compressors handling base-load in conjunction with inverter drive screw compressors carrying out modulating load duties in response to pressure variance.

Paint Plant – All paint plants have interlocking devices where upon detection of conveyors carrying no parts for treatment will switch pumps off and turn paint and drying oven flames down to low.

Setting.

Rolling Mills – All prime moving parts are turned off whilst no process is carried out.

Energy Usage

The assessment involved a review of the current energy situation, including site energy consumption and spend, energy management practices, energy saving opportunities:

Action points following this report included the following areas for improvements;

1. Changing pumps on the paint plan to lower ratings
2. Using compressor heating systems in certain areas
3. Changing lighting to high bay fluorescent with PIR switches to allow lights to be turned off for infrequent usage.