Energy savings horizons for the retrofit of chemical processes. Application to crude fractionation units

This paper focuses on presenting a technique to calculate energy retrofit horizons in process plants. In particular, it focuses on crude fractionation units. The methodology takes advantage of two facts: (a) Pinch-type calculations can be performed using operator type representations and (b) Processes like crude fractionation offer large flexibility in the operating/design parameters. This paper builds on the well-known sequential technique of performing pinch analysis after fixing operating conditions, particularly including heating and cooling targets. The paper analyzes the mathematical properties of the newly introduced implicit pinch operator. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.