(185l) Integrating Mass and Heat in the Synthesis of Carbon-Hydrogen-Oxygen Symbiosis Networks

The concept of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) integrating mass and energy among several adjacent plants offers industries synergistic opportunities that can lead to enhanced profit, reduced pollution, and increased conservation of natural resources. A special class of EIPs, Carbon-Hydrogen-Oxygen SYmbiosis Networks (CHOSYNs), has been introduced for the integration hydrocarbon processing plants [1, 2]. The synthesis of CHOSYNs establishes multi-scale benchmarks for the design by tracking the atomic fluxes of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms to develop minimum usage of raw materials and by including reaction pathways that can combine the atoms in a meaningful manner to produce value-added products and intermediates. Recently, the synthesis of CHOSYNs has been expanded upon by introducing “anchor-tenant” models [3]. In this approach, first-to-build and/or existing plants are defined as “Anchors”. The potential plants to invite, build and integrate with Anchors are termed as “Tenants”. Past CHOSYN studies have focused on increasing resource efficiency through mass integration. Opportunities exist to further increase resource efficiency by incorporating heat integration into the design of CHOSYNs. This work addresses the design of CHOSYN through the inclusion of mass and heat integration in the benchmarking and synthesis of the network configurations. The design of CHOSYNs will be further evaluated by introducing environmental constraints to determine the trade-off between profit and emissions. Alternative heat integration solutions considering intra-plant and inter-plant heat integration are explored. The anticipated outcome of this work are increased savings via the synergistic integration of streams and species, conservation of material and energy, and reduction in environmental emissions. A case study is developed to demonstrate the benefits of this methodology.

References

[1] Noureldin, M.M.B. and M.M. El-Halwagi, Synthesis of C-H-O Symbiosis Networks. AIChE Journal, 61(4), 1242-1262 (2015)

[2] El-Halwagi, M. M., “A Shortcut Approach to the Multi-Scale Atomic Targeting and Design of C-H-O Symbiosis Networks”, Process Integration and Optimization for Sustainability (DOI: 10.1007/s41660-016-0001-y), 1(1), 3-13 (2017)

[3] Topolski, K., M. M. Noureldin, F. T. Eljack, and M. M. El-Halwagi, “An Anchor-Tenant Approach to the Synthesis of Carbon-Hydrogen-Oxygen Symbiosis Networks”, Comp. Chem. Eng. (doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2018.02.024 in press, 2018)