Heat recovery and energy conservation in petroleum refining.
Larsen, William Gale
1990
Abstract
The focus of the analysis presented here is improved recovery (and use) of waste heat at existing petroleum refineries. The major energy-conservation opportunities associated with waste heat are systematically examined both physically and in terms of cost. The opportunities at the Study Refinery are systematically examined in detail. The presentation begins with an overview of the processes carried out in contemporary petroleum refineries including discussion of typical energy use. There follows a brief thermodynamic description of refinery energy flows with an emphasis on heat and on energy-efficiency analysis. The heart of the thesis is Chapters 3-5 describing heat recovery opportunities involving, respectively: extraction and use of heat from combustion gases being discharged through stacks, the exchange of heat between product streams, and uses for low-temperature waste heat. In Chapter 6, a unifying economic concept is introduced (with details in the Appendix): a supply curve for saved energy. This describes the potential rate of energy savings in barrels of oil-equivalent per year (in analogy with production capacity of oil or gas fields), as a function of the cost of saved energy in dollars per barrel (in analogy with the production cost of energy). The nature of the distribution is, of course, for the cost of saved energy to increase with increasing energy savings. In this chapter, estimates are presented for the energy conservation opportunities other than waste heat at the Study Refinery. All the opportunities are then summarized in a single supply curve. The extraordinary result in a cost-effective opportunity to reduce refinery energy use by some 26% at 1984 prices. This translates into roughly a $1 energy-cost reduction per 42-gallon barrel of petroleum input. Of course, investments are required; the net benefit would be about 1.5$ cents$ per gallon of product. This would be a major benefit in relation to typical refinery earnings. The concluding chapter includes a discussion of which projects are likely to be carried out at the Study Refinery, and why many, perhaps most, will not. (Unfortunately the author--WGL--did not prepare more than a rough draft of the concluding chapter.) The importance of this dissertation is two-fold: First, it provides a systematic overview of the opportunity to save energy and reduce energy costs in petroleum refining, combined with an analysis of the specific opportunities at a major refinery. Such an analysis has not been presented in the public literature for any major industrial facility in the U.S. Second, it provides clear physical explanations of the heat recovery options and of the reasons why some options are more advantageous than others.Subjects
Conservation Energy Heat Petroleum Recovery Refining
Types
Thesis
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