When it comes to improving the energy performance of petrochemical plants, most energy services firms focus on improving the performance of energy consuming equipment and systems. This may only form a small % of variable operating costs.
In such a case, the right way to go about is to evaluate the performance of the chemical reaction systems and unit operations such as distillation systems, heat exchangers, etc. The opportunities to be evaluated are:
- Optimizing the reaction conditions – Improving the yield of products, minimizing byproduct and waste products
- Potential for conversion from batch to continuous operation
- Debottlenecking of plant equipment or minimizing batch time
- Optimizing product quality in distillation columns for optimum energy consumption, etc.
- Evaluate steam network options such as optimizing let down levels, interchanging of steam turbine drives and electrical power drives, use of low level steam in reboilers, etc.
- Study of heat exchanger network to check for any heat integration opportunities and to eliminate heat transfer across pinch, etc.
Hold on; if your process safety performance is a serious threat to your business, then it is time to bring that under control before setting your eyes on the plant performance.
At QPES, we help you to achieve the above objectives. Call us for a no binding free quote on how you can increase your plant performance.