Design and Simulation of a Waste Heat Recovery System for a Cement Manufacturing Process

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As the ever-changing world continues to desperately look for alternative energy sources in the midst of an energy crisis, new technologies to recover power are revealing themselves and being implemented all across the globe. Most power plants are looking for more sustainable sources of energy over the long term. One such technology being adopted now by a lot of enterprises are Energy Recovery Systems. These systems work to retain and reuse energy that would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere after a certain process. They are sustainable and require comparatively lower capital. The objectives of this project revolve around the modelling of a Waste Heat Recovery System (WHRS) for a heat-intensive manufacturing process. The heat, which would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere, is trapped and converted by a heat recovery unit into reusable energy. The main principle on which such a system would operate is The Rankine Cycle, an idealized thermodynamic cycle. Successful implementation of such an energy recovery system would not just boost energy efficiency but also reduce operational costs. The modeling and simulation of the heat recovery system are done on an open-source chemical process flow software known as DWSIM. An analysis of this heat recovery model shows an increase of 19.66% in the energy efficiency of the manufacturing process. Heat recovery systems also have great benefits for the environment, as they reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases by such manufacturing plants and help reduce global warming.