Systematic energy and exergy assessment of a hydropurification process: Theoretical and practical insights

Abbas Azarpour, Mohamad Mohamadi-Baghmolaei, Abdollah Hajizadeh and Sohrab Zendehboudi

Energy, 2022, vol. 239, issue PC

Abstract: Improvement of process efficiency and reduction of operation costs are of significant importance in industrial chemical plants. In this study, an effective approach is proposed to analyze a hydropurification process, focusing on energy utilization, operating costs, environmental impact (e.g., CO2 emissions), and exergy performance. The hydropurification process includes heat exchangers, pumps, crystallizers, reactor, and furnace. This process is operated under high pressures and temperatures; it is prone to high consumption of energy and considerable loss of work quality. The vital operating parameters affecting the system performance are chosen by employing Taguchi method. The process simulation and/or thermodynamic modeling are carried out using Aspen Plus® software, and by writing codes for the exergy calculation in MATLAB software environment. The results are in acceptable agreement with the industrial data. The optimal conditions lead to 15% reduction in the process exergy destruction. The optimal operation can be established by implementing lower minimum approach temperature (ΔTmin) of the reaction system feed preheaters (e.g., 5 °C), setting a higher operating pressure in the heat exchangers of the feed preparation section (e.g., 96 bar), and enhancing the performance of heat exchangers using oil as heat transfer medium (optimizing furnace operating conditions). Furthermore, the performance of the fourth and sixth heat exchangers can be enhanced by 33.3%; the performance of the fourth crystallizer can be improved up to 18.7%. The furnace, which utilizes the expensive Therminol® 66 (as the heat transfer fluid), experiences a significant exergy destruction due to significant fluctuations in temperature and thermodynamic irreversibility in the combustion process. Implementation of the proposed optimal conditions can lower the operation costs and carbon tax by 9.96% ($20.5/h) and 14.75% ($14.54/h), respectively; and the CO2 emission rate can be decreased by 0.582 t/h. A decrease in ΔTmin of the heat exchangers improves the process specific energy consumption and exergy destruction. Moreover, effective control of the plant and avoidance of high fluctuations in the process parameters can lead to exergy destruction reduction.

Keywords: Energy; Exergy; Simulation; Hydropurification process; CO2 emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221022714
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:239:y:2022:i:pc:s0360544221022714

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.122023

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().