封面图片
2018年, 第12卷 第4期
(Timothy G. Walmsley, Nathan S. Lal, Petar S. Varbanov, Jiří J. Klemeš, pp. 630-642)
Ever increasing energy costs and environmental concern drives a cycle of continuous process energy improvement in the chemical and process industries. To remain competitive in the short-term and sustainable in the long-term, industrial companies and sites need to identify projects to retrofit and revamp their technology to keep pace with more energy-efficient new plants. Such options include disruptive projects (e.g., new reactor installation) or incremental improvement (e.g., new heat exchangers). Due to the capital intensity of disruptive change, most companies favour incremental, low-risk improvements to stay viable.
Our research focuses on developing techniques to analyse existing processing plants, understand its heat transfer operations and flows, and identify options to improve its energy efficiency. We call our new method the Automated Retrofit Targeting (ART) algorithm. A unique feature of the algorithm is the comprehensive search function that systematically looks at all possible pathways to save energy starting from the current network of operations. We presented a case study on a section of a refinery (27 streams and 46 existing heat exchangers) and found over 68903 feasible, unique retrofit opportunities. The most promising of these retrofit projects required 3 new heat exchanger units and reduced steam use by 4.24 MW.
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ISSN 2095-0179 (Print)
ISSN 2095-0187 (Online)
CN 11-5981/TQ
Postal Subscription Code 80-969 Formerly Known as Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering in China 2018 Impact Factor: 2.809