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Language: English

Conflict of Interest: In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Publication history: Received November 28, 2002
Accepted February 6, 2003

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Experiences from Using Heat Integration Software to Determine Retrofit Opportunities within a Refinery Process

Michelle A. Phipps Andrew F. A. Hoadley^†

The Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, P.O. Box 36, Monash University, Vic. 3800, Australia, Korea

Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering, July 2003, 20(4), 642-648(7), 10.1007/BF02706901

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Abstract

Heat integration techniques can be used to optimize the energy requirement for both new and retrofit plant designs. Software tools for identifying retrofit options are becoming available. This paper reports our experiences from using heat exchanger network (HEN) optimization software for a retrofit case study of an oil refinery process. The HEN optimization software was used to automate the search for the most beneficial retrofit designs following the two-stage process proposed by Asante and Zhu. The software provided three potential retrofit designs. Results from this analysis were used as the basis of a rigorous mass and energy balance simulation of the plant. The simulation corroborated the energy savings, but there were some important differences. The simulation required 20% more heat exchange area. Furthermore, the retrofit design involving one topology change was shown to be less economic than an alternative design. These differences are discussed and a revised methodology is proposed.

Keywords

Heat Integration Retrofit Design Heat Exchanger Networks Dewaxing Energy Recovery

References

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