Heat integration analysis of preliminary plant design of glycerol conversion into propylene glycol

Abstract

The heat integration of the preliminary plant design of propylene glycol production from glycerol has been successfully conducted in order to obtain an efficient process due to the energy consumption. The optimum value of ∆Tmin is also determined in order to obtain the minimum total cost. The pinch technology is used as the tool for heat integration analysis conducted in this study which has been widely used for heat integration analysis. However, the use of pinch analysis for the heat integration of the production of propylene glycol from glycerol still doesn’t exist. In order to determine the optimum ∆Tmin, the ∆Tmin was varied and analyzed. Those ∆Tmin were 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 K. The ∆Tmin dependence on heating duty, cooling duty, and the maximum energy recovery (MER) was also investigated. As the results, it was found that the heating duty, the cooling duty, and MER strongly depend on the value ∆Tmin. The heating duty and the cooling duty are directly proportional to the ∆Tmin. On the other hand, MER is inversely proportional to the ∆Tmin. The optimum ∆Tmin is estimated to be 15 K which gives $ 13530.480/year of utility cost and $ 89348.122/year of capital cost. The heat exchanger network of propylene production from glycerol is obtained at the optimum ∆Tmin.