Assessment of embedded energy of floor tiles manufactured in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Floor tile manufacturing is one of the highest energy intensive industries in the world. Basically, the thermal energy is the most prominent energy component in the value. Embedded energy is a fairly a new concept which will be used to estimate how much energy had been used to produce one unit of material. The embedded energy concept will be used to check the energy efficiency of the manufacturing. The embedded energy comprises four components as level 01,02 03 and 04. Level 01 energy is the direct energy used in the manufacturing process. Level 02 is the labour component and the ancillary services. The transport and mining energy is considered as level 03 energy. The level 04 is the energy being used for manufacturing of the capital equipment or the machineries which are being used in the manufacturing process. Accessing of level 04 energy is very difficult and that energy is not considered in this research. The fossil fuel is a limited resource to the world and in the countries like Sri Lanka, all most all the fuels are being imported. If it is strived to reduce the embedded energy or at least trying to reach the lowest values achieved by other countries will serve the world by saving energy. The embedded energy of a typical factory in Sri Lanka is 12.58 MJ/Kg for Level 01, 0.14 MJ/Kg for the level 02 and 0.84 MJ/Kg for Level 03. Which gives the embedded energy as 13.56 MJ/Kg. According to the literature revived the internationally accepted embedded energy value is 11MJ/Kg for the floor tiles as per Inventory of Carbon and Energy. To achieve the imbedded energy value 11 MJ/Kg is not an unrealistic task. For this the manufactures of the country have to rearrange their manufacturing processes in such a way that the wastages are minimized and the thermal energy is efficiently used. By rearranging the production process to have the energy efficient manner will serve two purposes. It will help to produce low embedded energy tile and lesser embedded energy means low fuel consumption in the manufacturing process. It will help to reduce the global energy demand and the unit cost of the product will be lower making it high profitable