A review and assessment of the energy utilization efficiency in the Turkish industrial sector using energy and exergy analysis method

Exergy has been seen a key component for a sustainable society, and in the recent years exergy analysis has been widely used in the design, simulation and performance evaluation of thermal and thermo chemical systems. A particular thermo dynamical system is the society of a country, while the energy utilization of a country can be assessed using exergy analysis to gain insights into its efficiency and potential for improvements.Energy and exergy utilization efficiencies in the Turkish industrial sector (TIS) over the period from 1990 to 2003 are reviewed and evaluated in this study. Energy and exergy analyses are performed for eight industrial modes, namely iron–steel, chemical–petrochemical, petrochemical–feedstock, cement, fertilizer, sugar, non-metal industry, other industry, while in the analysis the actual data are used. Sectoral energy and exergy analyses are conducted to study the variations of energy and exergy efficiencies for each subsector throughout the years studied, and these heating and overall energy and exergy efficiencies are compared for the eight subsectors. The chemical and petrochemical subsector, and the iron and steel subsector appear to be the most energy and exergy efficient sectors, respectively. The energy utilization efficiencies for the Turkish overall industrial sector range from 63.45% to 70.11%, while the exergy utilization efficiencies vary from 29.72% to 33.23% in the analyzed years. Exergetic improvement potential for this sector is also determined to be 681 PJ in 2003, with an average increase rate of 9.5% annually for the analyzed years. It may be concluded that the methodology used in this study is practical and useful for analyzing sectoral and subsectoral energy and exergy utilization to determine how efficient energy and exergy are used in the sector studied. It is also expected that this study will be helpful in developing highly applicable and productive planning for energy policies.