ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to improve the practical applicability of an interplant heat integration scheme. An existing non-cooperative-game-theory based sequential optimization strategy has been improved on the basis of the individual negotiation power of every participating plant to stipulate the “fair” price for each energy trade, to determine the “reasonable” proportions of capital cost to be shouldered by the involved parties of every interplant heat exchanger, and to produce an acceptable distribution of TAC savings. Also, to address various safety and operational concerns about direct heat transfers across plant boundaries, the interplant heat flows have been facilitated in the proposed integration schemes with either the available utilities or an extra intermediate fluid. Because of these additional practical features in interplant heat integration, realization of the resulting financial and environmental benefits should become more likely. Furthermore, from the optimization results obtained in case studies, one can find that feasible schemes can indeed be synthesized with the proposed two integration procedures. The interplant HEN design generated with procedure I (facilitated with utilities) should be simpler and more operable, while its counterpart created by procedure II (facilitated with intermediate fluids) is usually more energy efficient.
