Chemical Engineering Research Library
Applied research papers, thermodynamic studies, and process simulation reports detailing energy optimization, carbon capture kinetics, and refinery preheat performance.
This study quantifies thermal and economic degradation caused by crude preheat exchanger fouling in atmospheric distillation units. Using rigorous Aspen HYSYS simulations, we demonstrate that a 60% reduction in exchanger overall heat transfer coefficient increases furnace duty by 29.2%, resulting in $786,000 in excess annual fuel consumption.
Chemical absorption using aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) is the state-of-the-art technology for industrial post-combustion decarbonization. This paper provides a rate-based thermodynamic analysis of 30 wt% MEA solvent systems in Aspen Plus, achieving 98.25% CO2 recovery with an optimized reboiler heat duty of 3.42 GJ/ton CO2.
Pinch analysis provides a systematic framework for synthesizing heat exchanger networks that minimize utility consumption. Applied to heavy crude oil refining, our retrofit design achieved an avoided fired heater duty of 13.8 GJ/h.