(630d) Modeling of Process Steam Consumption in Chemical Batch Plants Based On Standard Production Documentation

Minimization of energy consumption in the chemical industry is one of the key principles of green chemistry. Although traditionally most efforts on energy saving studies have been done for continuous production processes, batch processes have recently become the focus of many research projects [1-3]. However, a shortcut modeling approach for screening of energy consumption in multipurpose batch plants, based on a simple and general data extraction procedure from process documentation is missing. In this work a new methodology for modeling of steam consumption in multipurpose chemical batch plants based on standard process documentation, rules of thumb, expert opinion, classical thermodynamics, and some model parameterization according to Bieler et al [3] is introduced. Two case studies using production data from multipurpose batch plants of two different chemical companies were carried out for the development and validation of this new shortcut modeling approach. Several reaction and work-up processes performed in different equipments were considered for the modeling of steam consumption, and the model results were validated against reference data in each case study. Additionally, the validation results were used to derive uncertainty intervals for the model outputs based on fuzzy set theory. It has been shown that the documentation based models proposed in this work provide acceptable estimations of steam consumption in multipurpose batch plants, and that the batch-to-batch variability of the steam consumption is well captured by the uncertainty intervals resulting from the validation procedure. The possibility of allocating steam consumption to individual processes or products in multipurpose batch plants by means of this new short cut modeling approach enables the identification of energy optimization potentials.

1. Andrej Szïjjarto, S.P., * Ulrich Fischer, and Konrad Hungerbühler, Bottom-up Modeling of the Steam Consumption in Multipurpose Chemical Batch Plants Focusing on Identification of the Optimization Potential. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2008. 47: p. 7323-7334.

2. Bieler, P.S., U. Fischer, and K. Hungerbuhler, Modeling the energy consumption of chemical batch plants - Top-down approach. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2003. 42(24): p. 6135-6144.

3. Bieler, P.S., U. Fischer, and K. Hungerbuhler, Modeling the energy consumption of chemical batch plants: Bottom-up approach. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2004. 43(24): p. 7785-7795.