Abstract
Integrating the Heat Exchanger Network (HEN) by Pinch Technology is an efficient method to decrease energy consumption. In a HEN, some source and sink streams, and their heating and cooling duties are dictated by the reactor. Hence, the reactor design affects the integration of HEN. There is the possibility to reduce the utility further by adjusting the reactor design parameters. To achieve this, it is necessary to consider the influence of reactor on the HEN integration.
In this work, a graphical method is proposed to analyze the effect of the reactor’s uncertainty of VGO hydrotreating process. Since the variation of the reactor parameters affects the inlet and outlet streams’ target and/or supply temperature, the temperature variation of the corresponding source and sink is accommodated by shifting the corresponding inflection point of the composite curve. Correspondingly, the part of the composite curve below or above the inflection point is shifted to target the heating and/or cooling utility. When the operating parameter of the reactor changes, whether the pinch will change or not can be identified by the proposed method, as well as the minimum heating and cooling utilities.
