A conceptual paper on application of energy efficiency measures for reducing carbon footprint in Zinc Phosphate coating process of automotive industries

Automotive manufacturing consumes a huge amount of energy to operate its production lines. Several processes involve including zinc phosphate coating process, which is a process that commonly used in automotive industries to improve the corrosion resistance of the metal. The process required plenty of hot water supplied by the boiler. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is used to boil the water to produce thermal energy for the process. Although the LPG is crucial in the production of thermal energy but its release by-products such as carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds emitted during the coating process due to the burning of the fossil fuel. The by-products contribute to global warming issues and produce waste to the environment. This research is present to design the energy efficiency best practices on the reduction of carbon footprint in automotive industries. A status quo to be referred to as baseline is determined, i.e. energy consumption and wastage by assessing the thermal requirement of the said manufacturing process. The data obtained is analysed to identify the best measures of energy efficiency. The thermal assessment method is used for data analysis to determine the potential saving of fossil fuels. Besides, pinch analysis assist in the determination of the process optimisation and system optimisation which lead to the reduction of operational cost and wastes as well as efficiently applying the heat during the coating process. Hence, the decreases in energy consumption reduce dependency on fossil fuels and wastes. Eventually, the application of best practices of energy-efficient measures diminishes the carbon footprint for the coating process in automotive industries.