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Show INTRODUCTION Many efforts to plan technology research fail to take the long-term view and envision future demands on a technology or process. The combustion community has adopted a novel technology development strategy that uses a comprehensive, long-term vision to guide subsequent identification of research needs and priorities. This innovative strategy, known as the Industries of the Future model, was developed and is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Industrial Technologies (OIT). A number of energy-intensive industries are using this model to establish broad goals for their industry and develop a set of priority research needs. OIT's Industries of the Future strategy is designed to help U.S. industries increase their energy-efficiency and reduce emissions, thereby boosting productivity and paving the way for future market growth. Most significantly, the strategy enables industry to take the lead in defining its own research needs. Establishing an industry consensus on priorities for the needed research helps align public and private resources so they can collectively focus on solving industry's toughest technical challenges. Using this approach, OIT is effectively leveraging scarce federal research dollars to achieve it's twin missions of improving industrial energy efficiency and reducing environmental impacts of industrial processes. The Industries of the Future model is simple and flexible. First, leading representatives from each industry are asked to anticipate the likely pressures on their industry 20 years from now and develop a unified vision of their desired future and the capabilities they will need. Based on the broad technology goals identified in this vision, each industry then develops a detailed research agenda, known as a technology roadmap, which specifies the research steps necessary for achieving the vision. Use of the vision and roadmapping process represents a contemporary strategy being adopted by industry. There are many advantages to using this type of integrated technology planning approach. One is that the vision and especially the roadmap lay out a comprehensive research plan, showing how an industry can effectively move from its current technological status to a desired future state. The roadmap helps to coordinate research among such diverse groups as corporations, research institutes, universities, and government laboratories. In these times of tight budgets, there are abundant opportunities to leverage research funds among different public and private funding groups, allowing D O E and other Federal agencies to align their resources to best meet industry's needs. INDUSTRIES OF THE FUTURE AND THE COMBUSTION COMMUNITY The industries involved in OIT's "Industries of the Future" are highly energy-intensive. These vision industries (chemicals, steel, aluminum, metal casting, glass, forest products, petroleum, mining, and agriculture/bio-products) consume well over 8 0 % of the energy and produce over 9 0 % of the waste and emissions in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Significantly, these industries derive over 8 5 % of their energy from the combustion of fuels, as shown in Exhibit 1 - (last column). The portions of this energy used to produce steam and supply process heat (third and fourth columns) vary by industry. Clearly, a comprehensive research plan for industrial combustion must include boilers (steam) as well as furnaces and heaters (process heat) to take advantage of a systems approach in improving overall efficiency. 2 |
