Implementing Energy Efficiency Measures in Industrial Clusters - A Design Approach for Site-Wide Heat Recovery Systems

Journal article, 2014

Heat integration between chemical production facilities in an industrial cluster provides significant cost savings opportunities. While single chemical processes are often well integrated, site-wide heat integration based on Total Site Analysis (TSA) tools often identifies opportunities to further increase energy efficiency. However, further development of the TSA methodology is required to improve its applicability for identifying practical heat integration measures and providing key information for investment decision makers. The design of common site-wide heat recovery systems in an industrial cluster is a complex task in which a large number of aspects other than thermal process and utility flows must be considered. This paper presents a procedure for identifying site-wide heat recovery measures based on TSA. The proposed approach is illustrated for a chemical cluster located on the West Coast of Sweden, showing feasible site-wide heat recovery systems achieving up to 42 % of the maximum total site heat recovery target of 129 MW. A number of systems are suggested ranging from low complexity achieving a minor share of the heat recovery potential to complex, strongly interdependent systems demanding large investments and a high level of collaboration. Estimated pay-back periods for the proposed systems range from 3.2 to 4.2 years, while up to approx. 12 % of the cluster's CO2 emissions can be avoided.