Pinch Technology

Energy Recycling in Oil, Gas, Petrochemical and Industrial Processes

Vahid Pirouzfar, Yeganeh Eftekhari, Chia-Hung Su

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9783110786316
• eBook ISBN: 9783110786439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Pinch Technology explains the principles of process integration, the use of pinch technology as well as energy recycling in oil, gas, petrochemical and industrial processes. It gives an complete overview of all relevant and similar references in the fi eld of energy recovery in oil, gas and petrochemicals.

Chapter 1 Overview on the History of Integration and Fundamental Concept

1.1 Overview on the History of Pinch Technology

Reducing the energy consumption and industrial unit expenses is the factor that has been always studied and researched in process optimization issues. Generally, the results are showing that by applying changes and providing suitable operational conditions by an accurate process control and monitoring, using standard methods and engineering design could help achieve this purpose.

In this regard, many concepts have been spread and process integration is relatively a new concept and widely used today in industries, in order to examine a particular part of process design.

1.1.1 Process Integration

A chemical and industrial process consists of a set of related units and many different streams. Process integration is a general way to design and run a process, and actually, it emphasizes on integrity of the process, which includes several parts.

Due to the evolution that occurred in process integration during recent decade, the International Energy Agency has presented a definition of process integration as follows:

In fact, process integration is the application of methods and algorithms which are based on system and through a comprehensive approach, it can lead to new design, modification and integration of industrial processes. These methods might be mathematical, thermodynamic and economic models and algorithms, that the Artificial intelligence, pinch analysis and mathematical programing are also some examples of them.

In other words, the main purpose of process integration is an integrated system analysis in such a way that the interaction of components in system is examined comprehensively in order to improve the design aims or utilization [1].

Process integration includes the following items:

• Optimization of energy consumption
• Optimization of external heat sources system and utilities
• Improving the process and operational conditions of equipment such as distillation towers and reactors
• Reducing operational and capital costs
• Optimization of hydrogen consumption
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• Optimization of sequential separation processes and discontinuous processes
• Reducing the rate of water consumption and effluent production

Heat recovery system is one of the basic parts of process units and has a decisive and key role to play in energy consumption of units, determining heat cost and promoting heat recovery in chemical processes. This system includes heat exchanger network, cold utilities and hot utilities.

Therefore, using process integration methods in refinery units such as petrochemical units has been developed and expanded. In this regard, many new methods have been invented, and the most important ones are pinch analysis and mathematical programming method.

1.1.2 Mathematical Programming Method

For so long, the energy supplying system of the process heat network was performed traditionally. In this method, the process core is firstly designed by constant flow rates and temperatures, and the mass and energy balances of system take place. After that the design of heat recovery system would be completed. At the end, other system requirements will be covered by the use of external heat sources.

Due to the high energy consumption and operational costs in classical methods, researchers by presenting mathematical methods have provided solutions in order to optimize energy and operating costs of industrial units.

In 1969, Kesler and Parker proposed a linear programming based on a simultaneous algorithm. In this method, which aims to minimize the total costs of process heat network, each stream splits into multiple and smaller streams that are equal and have specific heating load. Then the smaller hot flows will be connected to the cold flows. To expand more, networks that include all substreams must be built.

In 1973, sequential algorithms method and tree searching algorithm have been presented by Lapidus, which eventually created a tree diagram to design a heat network. But t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Chapter 1 Overview on the History of Integration and Fundamental Concept
• Chapter 2 Composite Curve
• Chapter 3 Cascade Diagram
• Chapter 4 Heat Exchanger Network Design with Maximum Energy Recovery
• Chapter 5 Heat Exchanger Network Design with Minimum Heat Transfer Unit
• Chapter 6 Estimating the Number of Shells and Heat Transfer Area of Heat Exchanger Network
• Chapter 7 Estimating the Cost of Heat Exchanger Network
• Chapter 8 Furnaces, Heat Engines, Heat Pumps and Distillation Tower
• Index