Energy and material flow analysis: Application to the storage stage of clay in the roof-tile manufacture

Energy and material flow analysis (EMFA) comprises a whole family of tools to optimize the consumption of energy, raw material, water and the discharge of effluents by pursuing systematically internal flows of energy and mass in production processes. Computer software with various degrees of complexity are available to facilitate this analysis.In this paper, EMFA is applied to the case of the manufacture of roof tiles in a ceramic industry. The stage under evaluation is the storage of clay. A computational tool, Umberto, was used for the analysis. This software allows visualizing the process, units and flows, to analyze from an environmental point of view the effluents and the costs involved as well as to carry out both the mass and energy balances. As the main objective of this study is to implement an EMFA tool into our system, so that it can operate more efficiently and reduce its environmental impact, the evaluation of flows and stocks was made using the performance indicators provided by Umberto. The iterative capability of the software allows the identification of improvement potential, by a quantitative comparison of input and output data with target values.