Mona Gharaie, Jin-Kuk Kim, M. Hassan Panjeshahi, and Robin Smith
CO2 Emission Reduction, Energy Efficiency, HEN Retrofit, Carbon Credit
Utilization of fossil fuel, as one of the major contributors in CO2 emission production, provides driving force behind global warming. Increasing energy efficiency through energy retrofit of process plants can reduce fuel requirement and hence reduce CO2 emission production. The current practice for reducing CO2 emissions often selects the retrofit options with no consideration of carbon tax or opportunity for carbon emission credit. This work presents a design methodology to select and combine from the heat exchanger network (HEN) retrofit options of different process plants considering the available investment cost for process integration measures and constraining carbon emission reduction target. The presented methodology investigates the capability of the introduced scenarios from combined retrofit options for carbon emission credit opportunity. In this method the decision for degree of heat recovery in retrofit of HEN can be made either based on achieving maximum opportunity for carbon emission credit considering fixed available investment cost or based on investing minimum cost to maintain the emission reduction target with no extra CO2 emission reduction. The final decision making is then based on total payback of the combined retrofit scenario. The method is developed through a case study. Results show that the presented method is capable to include issues of carbon emission trading scheme in making decision for energy conservation in process industries with the objective of reducing CO2 Emission. The results also illustrate that the payback of the combined retrofit options which are selected to meet the emission target are lower and hence better options relative to those that provide CO2 emission credit.
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