| Electrotechnology has the potential to significantly improve one of the most important facets of the chemical industry, the capacity for efficient energy and mass utilization. Its application is thus tied heavily to pollution prevention, and this link is explored here within the context of process integration and unit operation modeling. Electrical work is used to reduce costs and in most cases limit emissions and environmental impact in heat and heat/mass exchange networks. Heat and power integration of a specific two-stream problem leads to the first analytical optimal solution of such a chemical process. In a related project, an extended formulation provides the minimum combined heat and power costs—as well as a candidate network for the optimally integrated system—for any given heat exchange task. Potential cost savings of up to 50% have been observed. This extended formulation is applied to heat and power integration of distillation networks in conjunction with a novel approach for chemical process synthesis, called infinite-dimensional state-space (IDEAS) synthesis. With IDEAS the globally optimum design configuration for distillation networks is obtained. Finally, a novel mass pump/engine is developed which transports mass to/from a high chemical potential reservoir from/to a low chemical potential reservoir, utilizing or producing work in the process. The optimality of such a mass pump/engine is proven with respect to any other mass pump/engine operating under the same conditions. |
