High energy prices and tighter environmental regulations are forcing U.S. operators in the petrochemical industry to look at ways to reduce their energy consumption and remain competitive. There are various solutions available in the market to help improve operation of existing facilities such as advanced control and real-time optimization, but these approaches often address only a portion of the overall opportunity.

Fundamental design factors such as plant age, capacity, feedstock and technology employed can play a much more significant role in setting the practical minimum energy target for a unit, so for many the energy gap toward best in class performance can only be bridged through significant design changes. The gap between actual and best in class performance is often very significant, e.g. Solomon data suggest an average EEI for North American Ethylene crackers of 175 (1995 data), compared to plants in Asia at 126 (state-of-the-art = 100).

Despite the size of the opportunity, large-scale process technology upgrades are often not economically feasible due to tight capital payback requirements. The presentation will discuss a more incremental revamp approach where process modeling, analysis and synthesis techniques are applied to identify innovative low capital cost design solutions to help reduce the energy gap toward best in class performance.