Rising fuel prices, increasing costs associated with emissions of green house gases and the threat of global warming make efficient use of energy more and more important. Industrial clusters have the potential to significantly increase energy efficiency by energy collaboration. In this paper Sweden's largest chemical cluster is analysed using the Total Site Analysis (TSA) method. TSA delivers targets for the amount of utility consumed and generated through excess energy recovery by the different processes. The method enables investigation of opportunities to deliver waste heat from one process to another using a common utility system. The cluster consists of 5 chemical companies producing a variety of products, including polyethylene (PE), polyvinylchloride (PVC), amines, ethylene, oxygen/nitrogen and plasticisers. The companies already work together by exchanging material streams. In this study the potential for energy collaboration is analysed in order to reach an industrial symbiosis. The overall heating and cooling demands of the site are around 442 MW and 953 MW, respectively. 122 MW of heat are produced in boilers and delivered to the processes. TSA is used to stepwise design a site-wide utility system which improves energy efficiency. It is shown that heat recovery in the cluster can be increased by 129 MW, i. e. the current utitlity demand could be completely eliminated and further 7 MW excess steam can be made available. The proposed retrofitted utility system involves the introduction of a site-wide hot water circuit, increased recovery of low pressure steam and shifting of heating steam pressure to lower levels in a number heat exchangers when possible. Qualitative evaluation of the suggested measures shows that 60 MW of the savings potential could to be achieved with moderate changes to the process utility system corresponding to 50 % of the heat produced from purchased fuel in the boilers of the cluster. Further analysis showed that after implementation of the suggested energy efficiency measures there is still a large excess of heat at temperatures of up to 137 °C.

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SUMMARY Three different CO2 separation technologies for production of synthetic natural gas (SNG) from biomass gasification – amine‐based absorption, membrane‐based separation and pressure swing adsorption – are investigated for their thermo‐economic performance against the background of different possible future energy market scenarios. The studied scale of the SNG plant is a thermal input of 100 MWth,LHV to the gasifier at a moisture content of 20 wt‐% with a preceding drying step reducing the biomass' natural moisture content of 50 wt‐%. Preparation of the CO2‐rich stream for carbon capture and storage is investigated for the amine‐based absorption and the membrane‐based separation technology alternatives. The resulting cold gas efficiency ηcg for the investigated process alternatives ranges between 0.65 and 0.695. The overall system efficiency ηsys ranges from 0.744 to 0.793, depending on both the separation technology and the background energy system. Amine‐based absorption gives the highest cold gas efficiency whereas the potential for cogeneration of electricity from the process' excess heat is higher for membrane‐based separation and pressure swing adsorption. The estimated specific production costs for SNG cSNG for a process input of 90.3 MWth,LHV at 50 wt‐% moisture vary between 103–127 €2010/MWhSNG. The corresponding production subsidy level csubsidy needed to achieve end‐user purchase price‐parity with fossil natural gas is in the range of 56–78 €2010/MWhSNG depending on both the energy market scenario and the CO2 separation technology. Sensitivity analysis on the influence of changes in the total capital cost for the SNG plant on the production cost indicates a decrease of about 12% assuming a 30% reduction in total capital investment. Capture and storage of biogenic CO2 – if included in the emission trading system – only becomes an option at higher CO2 charges. This is due to increased investment costs but, in particular, due to the rather high costs for CO2 transport and storage that have been assumed in this study. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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SUMMARY In this work, integration of a synthetic natural gas (SNG) production process with an existing biomass CHP steam power cycle is investigated. The paper assesses two different biomass feedstock drying technologies—steam drying and low‐temperature air drying—for the SNG process. Using pinch technology, different levels of thermal integration between the steam power cycle and the SNG process are evaluated. The base case cold gas efficiency for the SNG process is 69.4% based on the lower heating value of wet fuel. The isolated SNG‐related electricity production is increased by a factor of 2.5 for the steam dryer alternative, and tenfold for the low‐temperature air dryer when increasing the thermal integration. The cold gas efficiency is not affected by the changes. Based on an analysis of changes to turbine steam flow, the integration of SNG production with an existing steam power cycle is deemed technically feasible. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.