Synthesis of mass exchange networks

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to introduce the notion of synthesizing mass-exchange networks (MEN's). A systematic, two-stage, procedure is proposed for the synthesis of cost-effective MEN's. In the first stage, a thermodynamically-oriented procedure is used to identify the thermodynamic bottlenecks (pinch points) that limit the extent of mass exchange between the rich and the lean process streams. Preliminary networks, that feature maximum mass exchange, are generated at this stage. The objective of the second stage is to improve the design of these preliminary networks so as to develop a final configuration of the MEN that satisfies the assigned exchange duty at minimum venture cost. This approach is applied t o the synthesis of MEN's with singlecomponent targets as well as multicomponent, compatible targets. An illustrative example on the sweetening of coke-oven gas is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed synthesis procedure.

Interval-based targeting for pollution prevention via mass integration

“…Using the mass-pinch diagram with external MSAs (Fig. I5) and by undertaking thermo-economic analysis (El-Halwagi & Manousiouthakis, 1989a,b, 1990bEl-Halwagi, 1997), we deduce that the stripping agent is the optimal MSA at a total annualized cost of $ 65 250/year.The final solution is shown in Fig. 12.…”

“…A systematic technique is needed to screen the multitude of separating agents and separation technologies to find the optimal separation system. The synthesis of MSA-induced physical-separation systems is referred to as the synthesis of mass-exchange networks (MENs) and has been introduced by El-Halwagi and Manousiouthakis (1989a). The subject of physical mass exchange networks has been addressed extensively in literature.…”

“…The subject of physical mass exchange networks has been addressed extensively in literature. This includes MENs with a single transferable component (El-Halwagi & Manousiouthakis, 1989a, 1990a, those with multiple transferable components (El-Halwagi & Manousiouthakis, 1989b), those involving regeneration of the MSAs (ElHalwagi & Manousiouthakis, 1990b), and mass exchange combined with heat exchange (Srinivas & El-Halwagi, 1994a,b), removal of fixed loads (Kiperstok & Sharratt, 1995), variable supply and target compositions (Garrison et al, 1995), fixed-cost targeting (Hallale & Fraser, 1997), MENs providing flexible performance (Papalexandri & Pistikopoulos, 1994;, controllable MENs (Huang & Edgar, 1995;Huang & Fan, 1995), and MENs with a single lean stream (water) with the objective of minimising water use (Wang & Smith, 1994;Dhole, Ramchandani, Tainsh & Wasilewski, 1996;Kuo & Smith, 1998).…”

Separation network design with mass and energy separating agents

“…In the early development, a systematic sequential procedure that can synthesize MEN was first proposed by El-Halwagi and Manousiouthakis (1989). In this work, preliminary network featuring maximum mass exchange was generated and then improved to obtain a final cost effective configuration which satisfies the assigned exchange duty.…”

A rigorous targeting algorithm for resource allocation networks

“…Pinch analysis, which began as a thermodynamic-based approach to energy conservation (Linnhoff et al, 1982), has evolved over the years to become a powerful tool for process integration and resource optimization (Linnhoff, 1993;Shenoy, 1995;Smith, 1995). Pinch analysis has been fruitfully used in analyzing heat exchanger networks (Shenoy, 1995), utility systems (Hall et al, 1992;Shenoy et al, 1998), integration of fired heaters Bandyopadhyay, 2005, 2007), mass exchanger networks (El-Halwagi and Manousiouthakis, 1989;Fraser, 1998, 2000a,b), water networks (Wang and Smith, 1994;Prakash and Shenoy, 2005;Bandyopadhyay et al, 2006), cooling water system (Kim and Smith, 2001), hydrogen management (Alves, 1999;Hallale and Liu, 2001;Hallale et al, 2002), material reuse networks (Shelley and El-Halwagi, 2000;El-Halwagi et al, 2004;Qin et al, 2005;Kazantzi and El-Halwagi, 2005;Foo et al, 2006), distillation column (Bandyopadhyay et al, 1999(Bandyopadhyay et al, , 2003(Bandyopadhyay et al, , 2004Bandyopadhyay, 2002Bandyopadhyay, , 2007Deshmukh et al, 2005), production planning (Singhvi and Shenoy, 2002;Singhvi et al, 2004), batch processes (Foo et al, 2004(Foo et al, , 2005, renewable energy systems (Kulkarni et al, 2007;Arun et al, 2006), etc. Recently, Bandyopadhyay et al (2006) have introduced a source composite curve-based approach for simultaneously targeting distributed effluent treatment system and th...…”