ADDIS ABABA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Course :
Process integration and optimization

Lecture one

2011
Part One:-
Process integration
 What is Process Integration?
What do we mean by a Process?
and
What do we mean by Integration?

A Process can be regarded as a “Converter”

 Cont’d
Integration means combining Needs/Tasks of “opposite” kinds so that Savings can be
obtained
Examples of such Integration in the Process Industries:
Heat Integration
Cooling & Condensation integrated with Heating & Evaporation
Design the corresponding Heat Exchanger Network

Power Integration
Expansion integrated with Compression
Chemical Integration
Byproducts from one Plant used as Raw Materials in other Plants

Equipment Integration
Multiple Phenomena (Reaction, Separation, Heat Transfer) are integrated in the
same piece of Equipment Process Intensification
Evaluation of process design from history to future
First Generation
•
Inventions that were based• on experiments in the laboratory by the chemists, which were
then tested in pilot plants before plant construction.

Second Generation
based on the concept of Unit Operations, Unit Operations acted as building blocks for the
engineer in the design process

Third Generation
considered integration between these units; for example heat recovery between related
processes streams to save energy

Fourth Generation
Consideration of more than one process phenomena(reaction ,heat transfer ,mass transfer ,etc.)to
take place within the same piece of equipment, significant savings have been observed.
Application of Process Integration
Process Integration concepts can be applied in various fields such as:
 Heat integration – heat exchange network
 Distillation column targeting
 Batch process targeting and optimization
 Emission targeting(GHG emission reduction)
 Mass exchange network (water and waste water management & recovery of valuable
materials)
 Hydrogen management in refineries
 Debottlenecking of critical areas in process industries.
 Pollution prevention
Co-production system
 Financial management
 Low temperature process
 Pinch Technology is a Technique Available for Process Integration
1.1. pinch technology
It is One of the most successful and generally useful techniques is that developed by Bodo
Linnhoff and other workers:
Pinch Technology provides a systematic methodology for energy saving in processes and total
sites. The methodology is based on thermodynamic principles. Figure 1 illustrates the role of Pinch
Technology in the overall process design.
The process design hierarchy can be represented by the “onion diagram”
The design of a process starts with the reactors (in the “core” of the onion). Once feeds,
products, recycle concentrations and flow rates are known, the separators (the second layer of
the onion) can be designed. The basic process heat and material balance is now in place, and
the heat exchanger network (the third layer) can be designed. The remaining heating and
cooling duties are handled by the utility system (the fourth layer). The process utility system
may be a part of a centralised site-wide utility system.
 The term pinch analysis is often used to represent the application of the tools and
algorithms of pinch technology for studying industrial process.

Pinch Analysis starts with the heat and material balance for the process.
Among the PI methodologies, Pinch Analysis is currently the most widely used. This
is due to the simplicity of its underlying concepts and, specially, to the spectacular
results it has obtained in numerous projects worldwide

• It is a systematic methodology based on thermodynamic principles to achieve utility

savings by better process heat integration, maximizing heat recovery and reducing the
external utility loads (cooling water and heating steam).

The application has resulted in significant improvements in the energy and capital
efficiency of industrial facilities
 cont..
It identifies the existence of built-in spare heat transfer areas and presents the designer
with opportunities for cheap retrofits

Pinch Technology is a well proven method in industries such as chemical,

petrochemical, oil refining, paper and pulp, food and drinks, steel and metallurgy, etc.,
leading to an energy saving of 10 to 35%, water saving of the tune of 25 to 40% and
hydrogen savings up to 20%.
Heat integration using Pinch Technology employs extensively the Laws of
Thermodynamics ⇝ I & II laws

Process integration has already had a profound effect on the chemical process
industries, in the form of Pinch Technology and heat-exchanger-network
optimization.
 First law of thermodynamics (FLT)
provides the energy equation for calculating the enthalpy changes( ∆H) in the streams passing
through a heat exchanger.

• Energy, neither created nor destroyed. It can only change forms

 Second Law Of Thermodynamics
Determines the direction of heat flow. That is, heat energy may only flow in the direction
of hot to cold. This prohibits ‘temperature crossovers’ of the hot and cold stream profiles
through the exchanger unit.
Simply, heat transfer can only occur spontaneously in the direction of temperature
decrease
Any system which is free of external influences becomes more disordered with time

It is impossible for a system to receive a given amount of heat from a high-temperature

reservoir and provide an equal amount of work output.
The sum of the entropy changes of a system and that of its surroundings must always be
positive
1.2. Basic Concept Of Pinch Analysis
 Pinch Analysis
The most industrial processes involve transfer of heat either from one process stream to
another process stream(interchanging) or from a utility stream to a process stream

The target in any industrial processes design is to maximize the process-to-process heat
recovery and to minimize the utility (energy) requirements.

To meet the goal of maximum energy recovery or minimizing energy requirement an

appropriate heat exchanger network is required.

With the application of Pinch Analysis, savings can be achieved in both capital investment and
operating cost.
 Possible Benefits Pinch Analysis
• the ability to set a target energy consumption for an individual process or for an entire
production site before designing the processes
• Pinch Analysis quickly identifies where energy, water, hydrogen and other material
savings are likely to be found
• Reduction of emissions
• Pinch Analysis enables the engineer to find the best way to change a process, if the process
allows it
• Update or develop process flow diagrams
• Identify process bottlenecks
• Run both department and full plant facilities simulations
• Determine minimal heating (steam) and cooling requirements
• Identify cogeneration (generation of electricity and useful heat jointly) opportunities
• Estimate costs of projects to achieve energy savings
• Evaluate new equipment configurations for the most economical installation Substitute
past energy studies with a live
• Substitute past energy studies with a live study that can be easily updated using simulation
 Basic Concept
A. Composite Curves It is the most fundamental concepts in Pinch analysis
• visualizes the flow of heat between the hot and cold process streams selected for heat
integration.
• It obtained by plotting the cumulative enthalpy of streams ,Temperature - Enthalpy (T - H)
plots ,have been used for many years to set energy targets ahead of design.
• The relative position of the composite curves depends on the minimum temperature
difference ∆Tmin between cold and hot streams. This sets also the Pinch position as the
place where the heat transfer between the hot and cold streams is the most constrained.
• Composite Curves enable to determine directly the Minimum Energy Requirements (MER)
from stream data without ever calculate heat exchangers. These are the minimum hot (Qh)
and minimum cold (Qc) utility required for driving the heat exchanger network, with a
minimum driving force of ∆Tmin at Pinch.
• The Pinch principle states that any design where heat is transferred across the Pinch will
require more energy than minimum requirements. Consequently, the heat recovery problem
is divided into two subsystems, above and below the Pinch.
T-H DIAGRAMS
B. Grid Diagram
the most helpful and easier representation to designing a heat exchanger network

The process streams are drawn as horizontal lines, with the stream numbers shown in square
boxes.
Hot streams are drawn at the top of the grid, and flow from left to right.
The cold streams are drawn at the bottom, and flow from right to left.
The stream heat capacities CP are shown in a column at the end of the stream lines.
Heat exchangers are drawn as two circles connected by a vertical line.
The circles connect the two streams between which heat is being exchanged; that is, the
streams that would flow through the actual exchanger.
Heater and coolers are drawn as a single circle, connected to the appropriate utility.
• C. Identification of the Hot ,Cold and Utility streams in the process
• Hot streams are those that must be cooled or available to be cooled e.g. product cooling before
storage
• Cold streams are those that must be heated e.g feed preheat before a reactor

• Utility streams are used to heat or cool process streams, A number of different hot utilities
(steam, hot water, flue gas, etc) and cold utilities (cooling water, air, refrigerant, etc) are used in
industry.
 D. Cost Targeting:- Determine Optimal ∆𝐓min
The minimum temperature difference between the hot and cold composite curves affects the
pinch temperature, the required external utilities, and the size of the heat exchangers.

The optimum ∆Tmin is determined based on the trade-off between energy and capital such that
the total cost for heat recovery system is minimum.
the total annual cost consists of two parts, namely, the capital cost and the energy operating
cost:
1.The energy operating cost includes energy expenses for both hot and cold utilities, which
is billed annually in $/year.

2.The capital cost of the network is the summation of installed costs for all individual heat transfer
equipment, including heat exchangers, furnaces, steam heaters, water coolers, refrigeration, and
other related costs, including foundation, piping, instrumentation, control, and so on.
 To arrive at an optimum ΔTmin value the total annual cost (the sum of total energy and
capital cost) is plotted at varying ΔTmin values.

Three key observations can be made from below figure

a, An increase in ΔTmin value result in higher energy costs and lower capital costs.
b, A decrease in ΔTmin values result in lower energy costs and higher capital costs.
c, An optimum ΔTmin exists where the total annual cost of energy and capital costs is
minimized
 What are Costs that are affected by changing the minimum temperature approach in a
heat-exchanger network (HEN) design?
 Cost of utilities (hot and cold)
 Cost of heat exchangers in the network, including process-process and process utility
exchanger

When we decreasing the ∆Tmin in a HEN, the process-process heat exchangers at the
pinch will required large areas and will therefor be more expensive. However, the amount
and cost of hot and cold utilities for the HEN will be reduced
E. Pinch Point
The location of ΔTmin is called the process pinch. In other words, the pinch point occurs at
ΔTmin
When the hot and cold composite curves move closer to a specified ∆Tmin, the heat recovery
reaches the maximum and the hot and cold utilities reach the minimum. Thus, the pinch point
becomes the bottleneck for further reduction of hot and cold utilities. Process changes must be
made if further utility reduction is pursued

Heat is transferred across the Pinch will require more energy than minimum requirements.
No heat is transferred through the pinchThis is known as the concept in pinch technology

This makes the region the heat recovery problem is divided into two subsystems, above and
below the Pinch.Heating utility can be used only above the pinch and cooling utility only
below the pinch.
F. The plus–minus principle

• The hot composite curve consists of only two streams; A between 20°C and 40°C, and B
between 40°C and 120°C. To increase the heat exchange and reduce the utility requirements,
we should modify the composite curves
 Increase the heat load of hot streams above the pinch or cold streams below the pinch, and
conversely to decrease the cold streams above the pinch and hot streams below the pinch. This
is the so-called “plus–minus principle”

Or cold stream is removed from above the Pinch (minus) and placed below (plus).

The sections of the composite curves where heat should be added are marked with a
plus(deficit), and sections where the heat load should be reduced are marked with a
minus(surplus)

 The formal statement of the plus–minus principle is that a process change will reduce the utility
targets if it does one of the following:

(a) Increases the total hot stream heat load above the pinch;
(b) Decreases the total cold stream load above the pinch;
(c) Decreases the total hot stream load below the pinch;
(d) Increases the total cold stream load below the pinch.
 Changes (a) and (b) will reduce the hot utility requirement. Changes (c) and (d) will
reduce the cold utility requirement.