Procedure for the Simultaneous Synthesis of Heat Exchanger Networks at Process and Total Site Level

Although Heat Exchanger Network (HEN) synthesis methods have been in existence for forty years, several issues still need to be resolved in order to obtain more realistic networks. Moreover, the complexity of the problem further increases when Heat Integration is performed at the Total Site level rather than at the process level. The usual approach is first to perform Heat Integration within the processes, and later to consider the non-integrated parts for Total Site Heat Integration. This sequential approach can omit some promising solutions and thus generally leads to worse results compared to the approach where the entire Total Site is synthesized simultaneously (Nemet et al., 2014). In order to obtain more realistic results, several practical constraints should be accounted for, such as transport between processes, optimal intermediate utility temperature level(s), pipeline design, heat losses and pressure drop (Nemet et al., 2015). In this work a synthesis of the Total Site is performed, which simultaneously considers integration within and between plants (at the plant and at the Total Site levels). For this purpose, the superstructure optimization approach is used. The superstructure contains all the possible matches for heat exchange within and between processes. Heat exchange between processes can be performed in the following ways: i) directly, by exchanging heat between the hot stream of one process and the cold stream of another process, or ii) indirectly, by utilizing an intermediate utility at optimal temperature levels (these are optimization variables). In both cases the transport of the heat carrier, either the process stream or the intermediate utility stream, is considered. Because there are severe nonlinearities and numerous options for heat recovery, the model is difficult to implement even for small-scale problems. However, when evaluating potential matches, it usually happens that most matches are either infeasible given heat transfer limitations, or unviable for economic reasons. A two-step approach is therefore proposed, where in the first step match alternatives are pre- screened with respect to infeasibility and unviability, and in the second step, a more detailed design is synthesized, taking into consideration the reduced superstructure obtained in the first step. The proposed two- step procedure yields results simultaneously at both the process and the Total Site levels, while also accounting for important properties such as heat losses, pipeline design and cost, temperature/pressure drop during transport between processes, and different types of heat exchangers.