Synthesis of Solar Heat Network for Preheating of Industrial Process Streams

Industrial integration of solar for process heat applications with periodic heat storage and backup utility system ensures reliability and efficiency of renewable heat utilization, thus minimizing the dependence on fossil fuel and energy related emissions. Furthermore, by minimizing heat duty from backup utility, opportunities for matching solar thermal and solar heat storage could be fully explored. This study models the industrial application of solar thermal considering direct and indirect integration, periodic heat storage and backup utility. For the synthesis of the integrated design, a flowsheet superstructure is presented for multi-period heat supply network of industrial processes. The design and optimization of the integrated system is implemented and solved in GAMS with the objective of maximizing total heat output to the heat network. To demonstrate the performance of the model, the proposed solar heat network design for industrial utility retrofit is applied to an illustrative case study of preheating a cold industrial stream.