Energy integration study of a chemical site Case of study (Building Y)

Abstract

The current economic context is pushing companies from all economic sectors to reduce their expenses. In the particular field of the chemical industries, the main components of the budget are: raw materials, salaries and energy bill. Raw materials and salaries are difficult to reduce without affecting the productivity or the quality of the product. On the other hand, the chemical sector still has an important potential for developing energy efficiency projects, and being more specifically, projects based on the Pinch Analysis. The Company’s production plant can be associated with the situation depicted at the previous paragraph. Some studies have already been carried out aiming to know which is the best strategy to face the energetic equation. Finally, it has been decided that Pinch Analysis is the solution that fits better the company. During the Pinch Analysis the main production processes have been studied, modeling those that represents the most important energy consumers. Thus it is possible to know where the energy is consumed and how much. Data shows that the biggest demand of energy is during the X reactions under distillation, these are followed by the distillation units consumptions. Once the necessary information is obtained, it is possible to create the composite curves, in order to study in a more visual way the possible heat recovery and which are the utilities that are more interesting to be installed. Last step consisted of realizing several energy efficiency proposals for the product A and product B production processes. Some of them are related to vapor as utility and have the lowest paybacks. These are followed by proposals based on direct heat exchange. Finally, there are scenarios that take into account compressors use (e.g. heat pump and mechanical vapor recompression) which have lower economic interest due to their high investment const.