Process Integration Lecture
Process Integration Lecture
LECTURE # 1
Shimelis Kebede(PhD)
Assistant professor of Chemical(Process and Environmental) Engineering
School of Chemical and Bio Engineering/AAiT/AAU
Example
There are two engineering design problems in chemical processes. The first is the
problem of unit operation design and the second is the problem of designing total
systems.
Outline flowsheets for the front end of a specialty chemicals process
The application of pinch analysis (in industrial sectors such as oil refining,
chemicals, iron and steel, pulp and paper, petrochemicals, and food & drink) can
typically identify:
There are four key steps of pinch analysis in the design of heat recovery
systems for both new and existing processes:
In principle, the “composite curves” used for obtaining energy targets at given
values of ∆Tmin.
Hot streams and cold streams are at least ∆Tmin apart. This is done by using shifted
temperatures, which are set at 1⁄2∆Tmin below hot stream temperatures and 1⁄2∆Tmin
above cold stream temperatures.
enthalpy balances can easily be calculated for each according to:
It would therefore be possible to produce a feasible network design based on the
assumption that all “surplus” intervals rejected heat to cold utility, and all “deficit”
intervals took heat from hot utility.
in practical applications and Tmin ≠ 0 is always valid. In order to`decrease the size
of heat exchanger to an acceptable level with reasonable price it is assumed that
there always exists a temperature difference, preferably Tmin = 10C. This 10C
can be treated in three different ways. It can be added to the cold streams, which
means that the cold streams are warmed with 10C. Or, it can be divided between
cold and streams which mean that the cold stream will be warmer by 5C and the
hot streams will be cooler by 5C. Finally, it can be decreased from hot streams
which in turn mean that the hot stream will be cooled by 10C. Suppose that we
choose the last option, although the hot streams cannot be fully warmed and
they will be cooler by 10C.
Streams and temperature intervals
Temperature intervals and heat loads for four-stream problem
any heat available in interval i is hot enough to supply any duty in interval i+1.
Instead of sending the 60kW of surplus heat from interval 1 into cold utility, it
can be sent down into interval 2. It is therefore possible to set up a heat “cascade”
as shown in Figure (a)
Assuming that no heat is supplied to the hottest interval 1 from hot utility, then
the surplus of 60kW from interval 1 is cascaded into interval 2. There it joins the
2.5kW surplus from interval 2, making 62.5kW to cascade into interval 3.
Interval 3 has a 82.5kW deficit, hence after accepting the 62.5kW it can be
regarded as passing on a 20kW deficit to interval 4. Interval 4 has a 75kW
surplus and so passes on a 55kW surplus to interval 5. Finally, the 15kW deficit in
interval 5 means that 40kW is the final cascaded energy to cold utility. This in
fact is the net enthalpy balance on the whole problem (i.e. cold utility will always
exceed hot utility by 40kW, whatever their individual values).
Looking back at the heat flows between intervals in Figure (a), clearly the
negative flow of 20kW between intervals 3 and 4 is thermodynamically
infeasible. To make it just feasible (i.e. equal to zero), 20kW of heat must
be added from hot utility as shown in Figure (b), and cascaded right
through the system. By enthalpy balance this means that all flows are
increased by 20kW. The net result of this operation is that the minimum
utilities requirements have been predicted (i.e. 20kW hot and 60kW
cold). Furthermore, the position of the pinch has been located. This is at
the interval boundary with a shifted temperature of 85°C (i.e. hot streams
at 90°C and cold at 80°C) where the heat flow is zero.
Exercise
To perform MER design for the problem, the grid diagram is divided into
two parts i.e. above the pinch and below the pinch. Then following the
pinch design criteria placement of heat exchangers is carried out as:
For the above pinch design of the stream network, two criteria must
be fulfilled
1) No. of stream criterion: NH ≤ NC