Cross-industry energy efficiencies to be investigated in Port of Rotterdam

The Port of Rotterdam is partnering with Yokogawa Electric Corporation to study how increasing industry integration can improve energy and resource efficiencies.

The Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest, is home to more than 200 industrial companies and while many have already highly optimised their operations, concerns about exposing confidential information have tended to hamper them from working with others in such an industrial cluster to further improve efficiencies.

The port authority and Yokogawa aim to address this challenge by facilitating confidential sharing of data and deeper integration among companies within the port to unlock the large potential efficiency gains of optimising production across an entire industrial cluster.

The concept is that through the integration of multiple utilities such as heat, electricity and hydrogen, industrial flexibility can be increased, which in turn can lead to new efficiencies.

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With regard to electricity, for example, consumption ‘behind-the-meter’ may be optimised between adjacent companies to manage peak demand, which could also help prevent or reduce electrical grid congestion in the port area.

Similarly with the orchestration of the use of other utilities. Companies that produce steam as a byproduct, for example, could choose to ramp up production at the time when a neighbouring company needs more steam, preventing heat from being wasted.

Overall, this multi-utility approach could ultimately make a meaningful contribution to energy and cost savings and emissions reductions.

A pre-feasibility study by the port authority and Yokogawa using computer simulations and comparisons with current operations in the port coupled with workshops and discussions with companies active there indicated that up to 5% improvements in efficiencies could result from better alignment of the use of electricity, heat, steam and feedstocks such as water and industrial gases.

In the long run, deeper integration and optimisation within the industrial cluster could yield savings as high as 10%.

The feasibility study now underway is involving several petrochemical and energy companies in the port cluster to define concrete use cases based on existing operations, with the first results expected by the end of 2023.

If sufficiently positive, the next step will be to develop plans for carrying out field trials with companies in the port from 2024.