Project aims to cut energy consumption in automotive industry manufacturing

The EuroEnergest project, which involves four other European partners, aims to reduce energy consumption in specific areas of the automotive industry such as HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), by a minimum of 10%. Professor Kai Cheng, Head of Brunel University's Advanced Manufacturing and Enterprise Engineering group, explained the scope of the project: "The automotive industry is one of the main industrial consumers of energy. With a significant 1.2% of the total European industrial energy consumption, an increase in energy efficiency by the automotive industry during the manufacturing process would result in an important advance in energy saving and CO₂ emissions limitation. "At the same time, the automotive industry is characterised by large factories with large amounts of energy data to be considered during regular operation. Such complexity is beyond human abilities and can only be analysed by automatic ICT systems." Over the next three years, the project's partners will work towards the development of an intelligent energy management system that will help to attain high energy efficiency in the automobile manufacturing process. It is expected that the systems will interact with industrial loads and available power sources to optimise the demanded power costs, as well as maximising local and low carbon energy sources. The project will include a deep analysis of CO₂ emissions and the process needed for measuring and modelling the manufacturing carbon footprint. "At Brunel, we will be leading the life cycle analysis of total energy costs and environmental impact along the whole process, where energy and CO2 savings measurement procedures and technologies are defined and developed," concluded Prof Cheng "We're excited about the potential of the project, and look forward to working closely with all the partners."