Hierarchizing Energy Saving Strategies in Wine Industry by Advanced Modelling of Chilling Units Operation

Abstract

Wineries are energy intensive industries and in order to make the production process more sustainable, solutions for an efficient use of energy should be implemented. Large surveys conducted in the wineries sector have highlighted the importance of performing accurate energy audits and have identified in the installation of efficient cooling/refrigeration systems the most promising solutions in a variety of cases. Unfortunately, the savings achieved by such energy efficient solutions is often calculated by highly simplified approaches, which do not take into consideration the actual operating conditions of the equipment (highly variable on a seasonal and daily basis). In this paper a systematic and novel procedure is presented, aimed at developing reliable cooling load profiles for refrigeration and air-conditioning and identifying to what extent more efficient chilling units could countribute to reduce the electricity consumption. With this purpose, the use of Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratios is critically analyzed, proving the need for seasonal indicators customized on the actual operating conditions of the chillers. The proposed method is applied to a winery producing still red and white and sparkling wines, for which only aggregated energy consumption data are available.