Reducing Energy Consumption in Cracking Furnaces Using Multivariate Modeling

Cracking furnaces are a significant energy consumer and consequently there are many long-term sustainability projects focusing on physical design changes that will result in energy reduction. However, the goal of this work was to quickly minimize energy consumption in Braskem’s existing furnaces without incurring capex to make physical plant changes. Multivariate analysis can be used to analyze historical operating data to identify opportunities to reduce energy consumption while maintaining throughput and adhering to other manufacturing constraints. This project was achieved through a combination of offline modeling, real-time multivariate process monitoring, and real-time optimization. This presentation will provide an introduction to multivariate analysis, an overview of the Braskem’s approach using AspenTech’s ProMV suite, and discuss some results achieved.