|
 Development
of pinch technology began in the 70s and contributions are
still being made. Some of the recent developments include:
- From an industrial area to the
entire region
By examining the net energy demand and surplus of different
companies combined, in curves such as the Total Site Curve, the potential
for sharing energy among companies can be found. Furthermore
insight can be obtained in the amount and temperature
of waste heat of an industrial area, available for export.
Depending on the temperature of this waste heat, it can
be used for district heating, greenhouse heating (combined
with CO2 recovery from industry and delivery to greenhouses)
or power generation using Organic Rankine Cycle technology.
- Network-pinch
When optimizing energy consumption in existing industrial
processes, a number of practical constraints must be tackled.
Traditional pinch technology takes these into account
in a limited way. Network pinch overcomes these problems.
The method first finds the heat exchanger that is the
bottleneck in increasing heat recovery and gives a systematic
approach for removing this bottleneck. This step by step
method gives a phased approach for realizing energy savings
consisting of consecutive projects.
- Top Level Analysis and CHP optimization
Standard Pinch Studies require detailed stream data, especially
in the case of large industrial complexes. Economical
energy savings options generated are based on a small
subset of these data. Top level analysis is a bottom-up
procedure in which one first determines the utilities
"worth saving" and how much of the existing
utility system can be saved within the context of the
constraints. This can be determined by formulating a MINLP
model of the entire utility system including steam distribution
headers, back-pressure and condensing turbines, and steam
generation facilities together with the constraints on
the system such as maximum and minimum flow-rates. Optimization
of the model to minimize operational costs for theoretical
steam savings in each header shows the extent of savings.
In complex steam generation systems this model can also
be used to maximize CHP performance by load shifting steam
to each of the existing turbines in the most optimum configuration.
|
