The 35th Annual Industrial Energy Technology Conference (IETC), one of TEES’s longest-running technical conferences, was held May 22-23 in New Orleans.
The conference was hosted by the TEES Energy Systems Laboratory and co-sponsored by the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
IETC, which attracted more than 150 participants from three countries and 26 states, provided answers to energy and related environmental concerns affecting industrial facilities and processes. More than 50 authors presented papers on topics such as waste heat recovery; establishing and sustaining effective energy management programs; award-winning energy conservation projects from the American Chemistry Council and from the U.S. Department of Energy Better Plants Initiative; and conducting successful energy assessments and analyzing the results.
In addition, there were papers presented by mechanical engineering students from Texas A&M University, highlighting their capstone design class projects in the realm of energy conservation.
The keynote speaker for a luncheon was Albert Thumann, executive director at the Association of Energy Engineers. Thumann gave a rousing talk about the past, present and future of energy management. He showed a recorded meeting he had with President Jimmy Carter, recalling the efforts to form the U.S. Department of Energy in the late 1970s.
A ceremony was held during which the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognized their Better Plants Initiative award winners, featuring comments by Dr. David Danielson, assistant secretary of the DOE. The program also included the lunchtime IETC Energy Awards presentations. Representatives from Legrand North America, TPC Group and the IBM Bromont Canada complex provided reviews of each company’s award-winning efforts to save energy and improve processes.
The conference also hosted two specialized workshops as well, the Energy Managers’ Workshop May 21 and the Boiler MACT Workshop May 24. These in-depth courses help prepare industrial energy managers with enhanced understanding on current topics in the field.
IETC will return to New Orleans May 21-22, 2014. Visit ietc.tamu.edu for more information.
For more information regarding the conference or to submit an abstract for next year’s IETC, please contact Jim Eggebrecht, IETC executive director, at 979.845.1508 or jim@esl.tamu.edu.