Paper

Paper Name    Evolutionary Graphical Approach for Simultaneous Targeting and Design of Resource Conservation Networks with Multiple Contaminants
Author    Qiao Zhang, Xiao Feng*, and Khim Hoong Chu
Publication/Completion Time    2012-12-13
Magazine Name    Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Reserach
Vol    52(3)
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Paper description    Large consumption and soaring demand have led to huge deficiencies in the availability of fresh resources such as hydrogen and water in the chemical industries throughout the world, casting a long shadow over their operating margins. More than ever the efficient use and conservation of fresh resources plays a pivotal role in many large-scale chemical processing enterprises such as refinery operations. This paper addresses the target of minimum fresh resource demand and design of resource conservation networks with multiple contaminants. With a view to the allocation of a single sink, a triangle rule is deduced from an existing design technique. In order to describe the quality difference of sources and sinks according to different impurity concentrations, the nearest neighbor algorithm for resource conservation networks with single contaminant is generalized to the case of resource conservation networks with multiple contaminants. On the basis of the new nearest neighbor algorithm, a ranking rule is established to give a reasonable order of sources as well as sinks. With the ranked order, the material recovery pinch diagram for multiple contaminants is constructed. For each match, the proposed solution procedure can achieve the maximum direct reuse at sharp match status of at most two contaminants. The resulting group of matching polygons gives the target and the corresponding network as well as the restrictive contaminants in each match. Three cases are studied to illustrate the proposed methodology.