24 - Extending Process Integration to asset maintenance and resource conservation in circular economies

Abstract

Rapid global industrialisation and urbanisation have placed heavy burdens on natural material resource consumption. The Circular Economy concept focuses on resource conservation and highlights the importance of maintaining and preserving asset lifetimes. This chapter presents an extended analysis of Pinch-based methods for conserving the material resources for an industrial site. The major extensions involve a conceptual analysis of a resource conservation network involving multiple quality constraints, header targeting and synthesis and Total Site material conservation network synthesis. These methods serve as a graphical user interface for selecting preferable design options whilst ensuring that fresh resource consumption is minimal. Considering the need for prolonged asset lifetimes, the long-term planning of a process or an industrial site is incorporated in this study, covering asset age, depreciation and reliability. Process Integration tools are proposed for planning maintenance costs and workforce scheduling over time. The maintenance planning utilises estimated downtime opportunities to conduct inspections and maintenance on other equipment, thus managing maintenance costs. The opportunistic maintenance management problem is analogous to a resource conservation problem for which the resources are labour, costs and downtime. This chapter demonstrates the potential application of Pinch Analysis in opportunistic maintenance management and short-term maintenance task scheduling.