Energy Optimization and Retrofit of Heat Exchanger Networks Case Study: Preheat-Train of the Crude Distillation Unit
Manal Awad Mohammed Ibrahim, Abdelbagi Osman Elsiddig Mustafa
كلية الهندسة والتكنولوجيا-جامعة الجزيرة · السودان
Energy conservation and its efficient usage in chemical process industries become the most debated issue considered worldwide due to the current energy crisis. This study is featuring energy optimization and retrofit for the Pre-heat Train heat exchanger network (HEN) of the crude distillation unit. The recent developed combinatorial approach of Paths Combination has been applied for such HEN to generate several energy retrofit options. Energy conservation was conducted by the means of utilizing heat shifting to reduce the energy consumption using each of the generated options. The heat shifting processwhich based on the (+/-) principle of pinch technology has been achieved using a simple developed Dev- C++computer programme. Heat shifting was conductedwhilekeeping a constant heat recovery approach temperature difference (HRAT) between hot and cold HEN streams. Shifting the heat from HEN utilities implies increasing the heat recovery between the processes’ streams. The penalty of increasing the heat recovery is to increase the heat transfer area for each of the affected exchanger in HEN without any topological modification. The obtained results had been analyzed economically to facilitate the decision of picking the most optimum retrofit solution. It was found that most of the generated options are located in the feasible zone of the HEN retrofit. Some of these options have showed a reduction in energy consumption in the range of 4964kW to save about 318K$/yr with 268K$ as penalty of capital investment to be returned within less than 1 year payback. The study recommended that the Dev-C++programming code which built for the heat shifting process in this study could be developed further to be adopted by ASPEN Plus Technology.