Prospectus

Return to Table of Contents Volunteer to help write Position Paper

OR-16 Energy Reduction Potential of Improved Process Control

Developmental Research Idea

Expected Economic Benefit : If a distillation column or refining train is not operated in a well-controlled manner, product purity may vary with time. In the absence of capital and manpower-intensive storage and blending operations, this variability necessitates over-refining. That the columns be operated with extra energy to ensure that specifications are always met. This increases energy required per kg of product produced, and the net environmental impact (direct energy costs, emissions, water usage, etc.) This has increased importance these days, as most large customers are beginning to hold producers accountable for the overall cradle-to-gate life cycle impact of what they purchase and demanding continuous improvement. So improved control has the potential to have considerable environmental and market competitiveness benefits, in addition to reducing costs of manufacture. Present Situation and Proposed Research: • Item A / Literature Study Literature study to understand ways in which the impact of quality of control on energy usages has already been quantified, and share key insights with membership. • Item B / Instrument Testing Independent testing of accuracy, reliability and robustness of various instruments that can be used to measure online product composition in the refining and chemical industry, as a potential improvement to reliance on just temperature profiles. Potentially demonstrate a range of these instruments in actual operation, and connect to required control temperature, reflux usage and boil-up. • Item C / Leverage Current FRI Controls Insights Consider whether we could leverage insights from FRI unit’s controls to provide quantifiable insights into energy savings opportunities. As one possibility: can we generalize FRI’s time to steady state learnings to a wide range of columns of commercial interest? • Item D / New FRI-Sponsored Tests Are there specific tests we could do in the current unit to understand the impact of varying temperature control at a point inside the column with time might have on performance, etc. If the FRI facility is not suitable to insights on a continuously operating facility, could we commission a plant test to get some of these insights. May well need to do it on both trayed and packed columns, since dynamic response (liquid holdup impact) may be quite different.

PROSPECTUS

Page | 60