Heat Integration Analysis of Gasification Process for Hydrogen Production from Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch

A heat integrated flowsheet has been designed for hydrogen production from oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) via steam gasification with in-situ CO2 capture. The process energy requirement and cost are calculated from the mass balances, energy balances and the economic model of flowsheet. The flowsheet calculation and cost minimization are carried out using MATLAB. The flowsheet under investigation includes steam generation unit, gasification unit and gas cleaning unit. For heat integration studies on the flowsheet, the pinch analysis is employed to obtain the energy efficient and self-sustained system. The heat integration study is carried out using SPRINT software. The analysis shows that considerable saving can be obtained for steam production using heat integration application as there is a large amount of available waste heat from the gas cleaning and cooling units. The results show that the minimum hot utilities required is 601.85 kJ/h and the minimum cold utilities is 13.82 kJ/h for the case of minimum temperature difference of 10 K. Furthermore, a feasible heat exchanger network that fulfills these requirements has been presented. Moreover, the cost of hydrogen production decreases from 1.91 to 1.84 US$/kg of H-2 by applying heat integration approach in the flowsheet.