From heat integration targets toward implementation - A TSA (total site analysis)-based design approach for heat recovery systems in industrial clusters

The European process industry is facing major challenges to decrease production costs. One strategy to achieve this is by increasing energy efficiency. Single chemical processes are often well-integrated and the tools to target and design such measures are well developed. Site-wide heat integration based on total site analysis tools can be used to identify opportunities to further increase energy efficiency. However, the methodology has to be developed further in order to enable identification of practical heat integration measures in a systematic way. Designing site-wide heat recovery systems across an industrial cluster is complex and involves aspects apart from thermal process and utility flows. This work presents a method for designing a roadmap of heat integration investments based on total site analysis. The method is applied to a chemical cluster in Sweden. The results of the case study show that application of the proposed method can achieve up to 42% of the previously targeted hot utility savings of 129 MW. A roadmap of heat integration systems is suggested, ranging from less complex systems that achieve a minor share of the heat recovery potential to sophisticated, strongly interdependent systems demanding large investments and a high level of collaboration. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.