Thursday December 17rd 2009
Presentation Room «N. Koumoutsou»

Prof. Robin Smith

Department of Process Integration, School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Process integration: Current status and future potential

Process integration as a systematic approach to the development of chemical process flow sheets, first a merged in the late 1970’s. Emphasis in the earliest applications was on energy conservation. By exploiting thermodynamics and graphical techniques, methods were developed to allow designs to maximise energy recovery. These techniques have now found widespread industrial practice. In parallel with the graphical and thermodynamic techniques, approaches based on the optimization of a superstructure were developed. These allowed automation of the whole design process and allowed both economic trade-offs and complex constraints to be included in the design methods. However, it is only recently that such methods have found their way through to industrial practice. Stemming from the early interest in energy conservation, process integration techniques were extended to encompass mass exchange. Techniques were developed for minimizing water consumption and these have found industrial practice. Another area that has found industrial practice is that of hydrogen integration in petroleum refining. Even though these tools are now well established in process engineering, with commercial software available, the understanding of such tools is still very patchy around the process engineering community. Whilst academic research has forged ahead into new areas, such as reaction systems, there seems to be little attention paid to this so far in industrial applications in these new areas.