Open Access

ARTICLE

Temporal Simulation of Boiler Efficiency Projects for Environmental Performance in Industrial Facilities

Rumana Subnom^1,*, Bibek Prajapati², Zhichao Liu², Hailin Li¹, Bhaskaran Gopalakrishnan²
1 Mechanical, Material and Aerospace Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA
2 Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA
* Corresponding Author: Rumana Subnom. Email:

Energy Engineering https://doi.org/10.32604/ee.2026.086697

Received 04 June 2026; Accepted 06 July 2026; Published online 31 July 2026

Abstract

Industrial facilities are under increasing pressure to reduce energy consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and demonstrate measurable progress toward sustainability and environmental-performance goals. Boiler and steam systems are major fuel consuming assets in many facilities, yet facility managers often lack accessible tools for comparing the energy, cost, and emissions impacts of alternative boiler-efficiency measures before implementation. This study develops an Excel Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) based temporal simulation tool for evaluating boiler energy efficiency projects under facility specific operating conditions. The model estimates baseline boiler energy use and CO₂ emissions from user defined operating parameters, applies selected efficiency measures from specified implementation dates, and calculates daily and annual changes in fuel consumption, energy cost, and carbon emissions. Nine scenarios were evaluated, including eight individual boiler-efficiency measures and one combined scenario. Under the selected baseline operating conditions, condensate recovery produced the largest energy reduction among the individual measures, followed by burner replacement, air-fuel ratio optimization, steam pressure reduction, blowdown heat recovery, blowdown rate reduction, flue gas heat recovery, and insulation of exposed hot surfaces. The combined scenario, which incorporated condensate recovery, air-fuel ratio optimization, and steam pressure reduction at different implementation dates, produced the highest overall savings. The model was verified using 12 months of natural gas utility bill data from a manufacturing facility. The simulated annual energy consumption differed from the utility bill total by 1.48%, while monthly absolute percentage errors ranged from 1.48% to 12.09%. These differences were attributed to production variation, weather effects, simplified load factor assumptions, and real world operating variability. The proposed tool provides a transparent and low cost decision support framework for preliminary boiler project evaluation, energy savings estimation, emissions accounting, and ESG oriented environmental performance tracking.

---

Keywords

Boiler efficiency; excel VBA simulation; industrial energy management; carbon emissions reduction; utility bill validation

---