الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Relatively old nitric acid plants are still operative in premises where modernization is hampered by investment constrains. In this work heat and power integration is applied to two existing nitric acid plants on the basis of operating and design data pertaining to a typical production train in each plant. Alternative scenarios for the modification of heat exchange networks (HENs) are studied. Integration of thermal and mechanical power is also addressed. The suggested modifications imply appreciable energy savings. In the first plant, 72% savings in the cooling water consumption is achieved in the gas coolers, while the power consumption per line is decreased by 20%. In the second plant, also the gas coolers’ water consumption is trimmed by 76%, and the power consumption per line is reduced by 100%. The effect of the proposed energy integration scheme on the economic performance revealed that the return on investment for the introduced modifications in the two plants were respectively 32.3 and 16%. This encourages further studies of process integration in existing chemical process plants |