TABLE OF CONTENTS As can be seen from the previous chapters, pinch analysis or process integration has developed into a large and complex subject in the last quarter-century. Even the details given are only a summary of the large number of papers which have been published developing the original procedures. Some of the new theoretical developments are complex and difficult to use in practical situations. The question which the average process engineer may ask is, "Which techniques are the most useful? How can I apply them on my plant?"
We need to reinforce the original goals of pinch technology:
Obtain a rapid understanding of the important factors regulating the energy consumption of a process.
Allowing approximate but meaningful energy targets to be set using short-cut calculations.
Pre-optimisation to identify the most promising schemes before embarking on the costly and time-consuming detailed design phase.
The stages in a pinch analysis of a real process plant or site were outlined in Section 2.5.2. Summarising, the key steps are:
Produce the heat and mass balance from the process flowsheet.
Extract the stream data for the process integration analysis.
Select a ? T min, using supertargeting if helpful.
Calculate energy targets and pinch temperature for the current process.
Investigate possibilities for process change.
Look at total site aspects including utility levels, combined heat and power (CHP) and heat pumping.
Design the heat exchanger network, starting with the maximum energy recovery (MER) design and relaxing.
There is significant...
