An integrated Pinch Analysis framework for low CO2 emissions industrial site planning

The development of Process Integration has paved the way for many generic application avenues for the efficient management of energy and resources. However, there is a need to develop a framework to guide industrial site planners to most efficiently exploit and benefit from the suite of Pinch Analysis tools in an integrated manner towards systematically planning a low CO2 emissions, while strongly promoting cleaner production alternatives. This work presents an attempt to develop a systematic framework for low CO2 industrial site planning, using an integrated set of Pinch Analysis related tools with algebraic algorithms established to complement the graphical representation. The proposed framework consists of four main stages. The first stage involves the baseline study of resources. The second stage involves Total Site Heat Integration to maximise heat recovery among multiple units, while simultaneously targeting for cogeneration potential. The third stage involves application of Power Pinch Analysis to optimise power allocation and integration of hybrid renewable energy system. CO2 Emissions Pinch Analysis is applied in the final stage to achieve the minimum CO2 targets via implementation of a CO2 emissions management hierarchy (CMH) to systematically explore options to maximise CO2 reductions. Application of this systematic framework to an illustrative industrial site case study resulted in an overall reduction of 56.7% in heat, 74.3% in power, and 99.8% in CO2 emissions. This proposed tool for low CO2 industrial site planning is available for designers, planners and industrial site owners to optimise integrated energy and CO2 emissions for Total Sites, starting from the individual process units, and ready to be extended to Locally Integrated Energy Systems.