Virtual sector profiles for innovation sharing in process industry : sector 01: chemicals

Production data in process industry are proprietary to a company since they are key to the process design and technology expertise. However, data confidentiality restrains industry from sharing results and advancing developments in and across process sectors. Using virtual profiles that simulate the typical operating modes of a given process industry offers an elegant solution for a company to share information with the outside world. This paper proposes a generic methodology to create sector blueprints and applies it to the chemicals industry. It details the profile of a typical chemical site based on essential units and realistic data gathered from existing refineries and chemical plants

Optimization of Material and Energy Integration in Eco-Industrial Networks

This work develops a generalized modeling framework using several techniques for assessing the feasibility of an eco-industrial network or ‘eco-park’ in order to demonstrate the environmental and economic benefits of industrial facilities with cooperative goals to conserve energy and materials. The work takes advantage of three distinct types of modeling techniques (linear programming, mixed-integer linear programming and mixed-integer non-linear programming) to incorporate increasingly complex circumstances for designing eco-industrial networks. The purpose of this research is to provide policy-makers and facility designers with an approach to optimize construction of facilities based upon economic and environmental incentives. This framework allows for optimizing the material and energy efficiency of a network of facilities to reduce emissions, waste, and input of materials and energy while maintaining production levels. Major contributions from this thesis are to examine the potential for alternative-fuel vehicles within the concept of a hydrogen economy and exploration of eco-industrial networks, utilizing the tools of life cycle analysis and system optimization. Life-cycle assessment is utilized as a tool for decision-making throughout this thesis and is an invaluable asset in making environmentally-conscious decisions. This type of assessment evaluates the emissions of a product from virgin material extraction through to final disposition in the aquatic, terrestrial or atmospheric domain. The use of life-cycle assessment techniques shows clear impacts on society over the entire lifecycle of the products and processes considered herein. Development of a dual-objective function to account for economics and environmental performance of industrial facilities is developed and utilized to aid in the decision process for policy-makers and facility designers. The concept of eco-industrial networks is further extended by including additional components, such as transportation modes, within the model. To this end, preliminary work examines the practical possibility of shifting automobile propulsion technologies to alternative fuels with emphasis on the criteria air contaminants considered herein of greenhouse gases, volatile organic compounds, and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. The scenarios presented are based on a model of the electricity system in the province of Ontario, Canada and energy pathway analysis to assess the supportable market penetration of, and emissions from, alternative vehicle technologies. The recommendation of this work is that a transition to electric vehicles in the near-term followed by a transition to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will yield the largest reduction in criteria air contaminants in both the urban centre of Toronto, Ontario and in the province as a whole. The consideration of transportation and transitional technologies feeds directly into the concept of eco-industrial parks and the benefit to society of their implementation. The reduction in transportation distance between relatable chemical manufacturers has been hailed as a major benefit of implementing eco-industrial park topology. This work develops a generalized modeling framework for eco-industrial parks based on a dual objective of societal and industrial requirements. The nodes considered in this work include: energy generation via hydrocarbon gasification or reforming, carbon capture, carbon sequestration, pressure-swing adsorption in addition to the manufacture of ammonia and urea within the context of refueling a fleet of 1000 hydrogen vehicles. Life-cycle assessment is applied to form the societal benefits of operating facilities within an eco-industrial framework and the long-term economics of the processes are considered to form the economic portion of the objective. Modeling is carried out in three distinct types: linear programming, mixed-integer linear programming and mixed-integer non-linear programming. Each of these types represents a different modeling framework developed to assess various complexities in the eco-industrial network and yet they share common goals, themes and analysis methods. Using each of these approaches, a case study eco-industrial park is analyzed using the three types of modeling methodologies mentioned. The simpler LP model is unable to account for some of the complexities inherent in an eco-park network and thus the results from this model are subsequently viewed as an upper boundary on the benefits of eco-industrial integration for the case study mentioned. The subsequent efforts of mixed-integer linear and non-linear programming serve to refine the model and provide more realistic investigation of the benefits of such a network. In order to achieve a reduction in emissions of harmful substances to the air, water and land to meet national targets, analysis of the interactions between humans and the environment must be explored to unlock new avenues of production and consumption to reduce the impact that society is having on the environment. This work is completed within the larger context of the potential hydrogen economy with the supposition that such a scenario will be enabled by increasingly effective technology. The transition of our current infrastructure to the hydrogen economy shows benefits to air quality from reduced emissions of vehicles and also from a reduced industrial contribution.4 month

Synthesis of Heat-Integrated Water Allocation Networks: A Meta-Analysis of Solution Strategies and Network Features

Industries consume large quantities of energy and water in their processes which are often considered to be peripheral to the process operation. Energy is used to heat or cool water for process use; additionally, water is frequently used in production support or utility networks as steam or cooling water. This enunciates the interconnectedness of water and energy and illustrates the necessity of their simultaneous treatment to improve energy and resource efficiency in industrial processes. Since the seminal work of Savulescu and Smith in 1998 introducing a graphical approach, many authors have contributed to this field by proposing graphically- or optimization-based methodologies. The latter encourages development of mathematical superstructures encompassing all possible interconnections. While a large body of research has focused on improving the superstructure development, solution strategies to tackle such optimization problems have also received significant attention. The goal of the current article is to study the proposed methodologies with special focus on mathematical approaches, their key features and solution strategies. Following the convention of Jeżowski, solution strategies are categorized into: decomposition, sequential, simultaneous, meta-heuristics and a more novel strategy of relaxation/transformation. A detailed, feature-based review of all the main contributions has also been provided in two tables. Several gaps have been highlighted as future research direction

Možnosti řešení velkých vrhů selat

The aim of the first experiment was to verify the effectiveness and profitability of providing supplemental feed to piglets. The milk feed mixture of two producers (MFM-1 vs MFM-2) were evaluated (served ad libitum). All piglets were suckled and were fed with the pre-starter feed mixture from the 5th day until the weaning stage. The control group without milk supplements has shown a higher piglet mortality and worse body condition of sows. The usage of milk supplements led to the elimination of the sow body condition loss during the suckling period and reduced feed mixture consumption in sows (P<0.05). The MFM-1 group was found to have a higher consumption of milk supplements, the lowest mortality and the lowest loss of sow body condition (P<0.05). However, from the economic point of view, i.e. the costs on 1 weaned pig, slightly better results have been proven at the MFM-2 milk supplement. In the second experiment sows were divided into 2 groups. In the first group, the piglets were fed with milk substitute and in the second group, nurse sows (15% of the herd) were used. Nurse sows had a longer suckling period and farrowing interval, a slightly lower number of litters per sow per year and by 0.93 lower number weaning piglets per year. Using the milk substitute, generated a higher business profit per year than for nurse sows. However, the fact that nurse sows block the farrowing pen should be taken into account. In case that fewer sows were kept, business profit would be higher.Cílem 1. pokusu bylo ověřit efektivitu a rentabilitu přikrmování selat. Byly hodnocené mléčné směsi dvou výrobců, a to MKS-1 vs. MKS-2 podávané ad libitum. Všechna selata byla kojená a od 5. dne věku do odstavu ve 28 dnech podávaný prestarter. Kontrolní skupina bez přikrmování vykázala vyšší úhyn selat do odstavu a horší kondici prasnic při odstavu. Použití mléčných krmných směsí vedlo k eliminaci ztráty kondice prasnic v období kojení a snížilo spotřebu krmných směsí pro prasnice (P<0,05). U skupiny MKS-1 byla vyšší spotřeba mléčné krmné směsi, nejnižší úhyn a nejmenší ztráta kondice prasnic (P<0,05). Nicméně z hlediska nákladů na 1 odstavené sele, vykázalo mírně lepší výsledky přikrmování mléčnou směsí MKS-2. Ve 2. pokusu byly prasnice rozdělené do 2 skupin. U první skupiny byla selata přikrmovaná mléčnou náhražkou a u druhé skupiny byly využité kojné prasnice, které tvořily 15 % stáda. Kojné prasnice měly delší dobu kojení a délku mezidobí, nepatrně nižší počet vrhů na prasnici za rok a o 0,93 nižší počet dochovaných selat za rok. Při použití mléčné náhražky byl dosažený vyšší podnikatelský zisk za rok než u kojných prasnic. Je však potřeba přihlédnout k tomu, že kojné prasnice blokují porodní kotec. Za předpokladu, že by kojných prasnic bylo chováno méně, podnikatelský zisk by byl vyšší

A Hybrid Methodology for Combined Interplant Heat, Water, and Power Integration

The growing desire to improve resource efficiency and environmental impact of industrial processes is directly linked to optimal management of heat, mass and power flows. The concept of industrial symbiosis tackles this issue by proposing interplant heat recovery and resource transfer which can bring economical and environmental benefits to each party. A comprehensive methodology is required which can easily be incorporated in the planning of industrial clusters. Therefore, a generic hybrid mixed integer linear programming superstructure has been developed to address simultaneous heat, water, and power optimization in interplant operations. Additional concepts are included in the previously-proposed water network superstructure (Kermani et al., 2017) to account for the issues related to interplant heat and mass exchange. A cold utility superstructure is included in the water network while a steam network superstructure is modified to better represent the feedwater heaters and heat recovery opportunities. The proposed methodology is applied to an industrial case study. Results exhibit a large potential for synergies among industrial sites, even in disparate sectors, and emphasize the importance of a generic approach

Optimal heat pump integration in industrial processes

Among the options for industrial waste heat recovery and reuse which are currently discussed, heat pumping receives far less attention than other technologies (e.g. organic rankine cycles). This, in particular, can be linked to a lack of comprehensive methods for optimal design of industrial heat pump and refrigeration systems, which must take into account technical insights, mathematical principles and state-of-the-art features. Such methods could serve in a twofold manner: (1) in providing a foundation for analysis of heat pump economic and energetic saving potentials in different industries, and further (2) in giving directions for experimentalists and equipment manufacturers to adapt and develop heat pump equipment to better fit the process needs. This work presents a novel heat pump synthesis method embedded in a computational framework to provide a basis for such analysis. The superstructure-based approach is solved in a decomposition solution strategy based on mathematical programming. Heat pump features are incorporated in a comprehensive way while considering technical limitations and providing a set of solutions to allow expert-based decision making at the final stage. Benchmarking is completed by applying the method on a set of literature cases which yields improved-cost solutions between 5% and 30% compared to those reported previously. An extended version of one case is presented considering fluid selection, heat exchanger network (HEN) cost estimations, and technical constraints. The extended case highlights a trade-off between energy efficiency and system complexity expressed in number of compression stages, gas- and sub-cooling. This is especially evident when comparing the solutions with 3 and 5 compression stages causing an increase of the COP from 2.9 to 3.1 at 3% increase in total annualized costs (TAC)

Optimal design of solar-assisted industrial processes considering heat pumping: Case study of a dairy

Pinch analysis and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) have been extensively studied for optimization of industrial processes addressing heat recovery, utility selection and sizing. Analysis of renewable utility integration, such as solar thermal or photovoltaics, introduces several obstacles for established methods: the time-dependency of resources, storage inertia and losses, and intrinsic non-linearities of the system performance are difficult to represent by linearized, time-invariant MILP equations. Moreover, waste heat recovery options such as heat pumping cannot be neglected as a potential competitor to solar heat. This work presents a set of multi-period MILP equations for solar technologies as well as a superstructure for optimization of heat pump cycles. Additionally, a methodology is proposed and applied to simultaneously optimize the process' refrigeration and renewable utility system using ɛ-constrained parametric optimization. The proposed methodology is illustrated on the basis of a dairy plant for which the different utility technologies are compared and evaluated based on economic and environmental criteria. It is illustrated that integration of solar energy can contribute to strongly reduce the environmental impact of the process (65–75% reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions), but only in combination with heat recovery (27%) and an improved heat pump system (33%). Heat recovery and heat pump placement for industrial processes are hereby shown to reduce exergy destruction and total cost while improving system energy efficiency by means of thermo-economic optimization. The solutions show that investment in solar energy can be economically and environmentally attractive for industrial processes by considering the whole system and ensuring that solar energy is optimally integrated and utilized

Thermal profile construction for energy-intensive industrial sectors

Industrial plant data are difficult to find in academic literature for a number of reasons such as confidentiality, and thus intentional masking, or problem size reduction. These common practices limit the ability of researchers to apply novel methods to real cases and understand energy consumption of real industrial plant instances. This is especially pertinent in the field of process integration, as realistic representations of real processes form the basis for the application of novel technologies. Few efforts have been made in this area, demonstrating the added value of these profiles; thus, a clear methodology is required for constructing such energy consumption profiles. The method proposed in this work defines an approach for constructing the heat profiles of major industries in a generic way. Parameterized models of several major European industries are presented for defining specific production/plant instances based on contextual specificities to represent different production pathways. The profile construction methodology is described for several situations of data access. Confidentiality issues are addressed by different anonymization techniques such as aggregation, statistical treatment, or by using data which are already publicly available. In this work, data were gathered from real plant operations and validated at higher levels using public information. Although the potential applications and implications of these profiles are clear, two cases are presented to exhibit adaptation of the parameterized models to specific instances and profile use for process integration problems. Varying the model parameters represents different plant instances and thus yield different integration solutions for the major process industries included in this work