Energy Efficiency Opportunities for Tobacco Curing Barns

Tobacco curing is an energy intensive process that has made some progress in automation, but overall has not significantly changed over the past decades. In this report the authors evaluated the most practical and also typical retrofit scenarios, such as envelope improvements and the installation of an automated control systems. In terms of their anticipated impact on energy savings the different opportunities ranged from around 6% for added control strategies to around 12% for typical standard envelope improvements. A total upper limit of savings around 25% has been established, if more aggressive envelope improvements are paired with automated control systems. While the commonly known retrofit scenarios tackle all consumption domains other than the dehumidification/ventilation domain, it became apparent that the most promising savings lay in recovering some of the ventilation losses that are a result of controlling for the relative humidity in the curing compartment of the barn.