Carbon emissions reduction in tobacco primary processing line: A case study in China

As one of the major carbon dioxide emitter, industrial sector has attracted considerable attention of the whole society on the energy saving and emissions reduction issue. Since the tobacco primary process has the typical characteristics of process industry, and it represents about 80% of the total energy consumption of cigarette production, this paper proposes an integrated model employing the e-p method, which is widely used in the energy consumption analysis of the process industry, to estimate the energy saving and emissions reduction potential of the tobacco primary process. Based on the energy consumption data of the three Chinese cigarette enterprises in 2015, the results show that as to the section energy intensity factor of the tobacco primary process, the changes of the tobacco leaf pre-conditioning section and the cut lamina drying section can lead to 18%–47% and 9%–36% reduction of the unit cut tobacco energy intensity, and as to the production ratio factor, the lower proportion of cut stem can lead to 15%–33% reduction of the unit cut tobacco energy intensity because of the higher energy intensity of the stem process section. In addition, scenario analysis has been used to discover the energy saving and emissions reduction potential by process optimization and products structure upgrade under the premise of the fixed total production volume, the actual production portfolio and process equipment of three enterprises. Finally, the effective measures and policy suggestions to realize the goal of energy saving and emissions reduction for three cigarette enterprises are provided.