Abstract
Industrial processes pose a serious threat to the world’s natural resources for they consume them in high proportions as sources of energy for driving chemical processes that provide raw materials for many industrial chemicals. The chemical and petrochemical industries consume about 61% of global industrial energy and emit about 36% of carbon dioxide to the environment. A significant portion of the energy demand is entirely for feedstock, which cannot be reduced through energy efficiency measures. The responsibility therefore for cutting back on the amount of energy needed for chemical processes rests on improving the efficiency of the processes used.
The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the use of a novel method of synthesizing process flowsheets, using a graphical tool called the GH-space and in particular to look at how it can be used to compare the reactions of a combined simultaneous process with regard to their thermodynamics. This allows us to synthesize flow-sheets that are reversible and which meet the process targets by implementing mass and energy integration. It also provides guidance on what design decisions would be best suited to developing new processes that are more effective and make lower demands on raw material and energy usage. The approach also provides useful information for evaluating processes through likely limiting extents with respect to the reaction pathways, and comparison between the research findings and their theoretical targets in order to identify any possible energy savings that can be made.
The GH-space technique uses fundamental thermodynamic principles to allow the mass, energy and work balances locate the attainable region for chemical processes in a reactor. Furthermore, processes and unit operations can be defined as vectors in the GH-space. Using the targets, one can combine the vector processes in such a way as to approach the target. These vector processes, and the way they are combined, can then be interpreted in terms of flowsheets. This is opposite to what is normally done and allows the process balances to determine what the best flowsheet might look like, allowing for great innovation from the very start of a design. In addition to this, probably the greatest advantage of the GH-space technique is that processes of great complexity can all be analysed on a set of two-dimensional axes. After finding the attainable region, its boundaries can be interpreted in...
M.Tech. (Chemical Engineering)