Improving energy efficiency of monomer production units through direct process integration

Abstract

One of the urgent problems today is the increased energy consumption in the industrial sector. This negatively affects the ultimate cost of the product and also leads to increased anthropogenic impact on the environment. Industrial-territorial clusters have extensive utility networks, which transfer heat between plants, so the development of methods to reduce their energy consumption will solve this problem. This paper presents a systematic approach to assessing the possibility of direct process integration of plants belonging to the same industrial-territorial cluster to maximize heat recovery. The determination of process flows used for direct process integration can be made based on the territorial location of plants and the availability of space for new heat exchange equipment and piping, and the maximum potential for heat recovery can be estimated using a composite curve graph. The study analyzes monomer production and assesses the potential for reducing energy consumption through direct process integration of pyrolysis and gas separation units, which amounted to 7.3 MW and can only be achieved with process integration. The total reduction in energy consumption with joint intraand direct process integration is 66.7 MW. This also leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions of 140,152 t/year.