Using pinch technology in operations?

Zoran Milosevic, Allan Rudman and Richard Brown KBC Process Technology, UK

inch Technology is a well established concept, and a tool used to

optimise waste heat recovery and
design efficient heat integration
schemes in a wide range of applications,
throughout
the
process
industries. What is less obvious is
that Pinch Technology can assist an
operating engineer in his daily work.
The paper discusses the basic pinch
principles and how the knowledge of
them helps in understanding the
operation and behaviour of heat
exchanger networks, finding the operational improvements, calculating the
effects of exchanger fouling, benchmarking the energy performance of Figure 1 Projected energy versus plant cost trend
Source: KBC Process Technology
existing process units, and identifying
their improvement potential.
view feel that since any recently built petroIntroduction
chemical plants have been designed close to
Pinch Technology is arguably the most rigorous, optimum, while new ones are unlikely to be
systematic and best documented methodology in constructed in the current global energy climate,
all process design.1,2,3 Virtually, no design involv- practically all major pinch work had already
ing the optimisation of process heat recovery is been done.
While the underlying logic of such viewpoint
carried out without applying some form of pinch
analysis. Pinch Technology is particularly useful can be understood, it is nevertheless incorrect
when designing very complex processes, such as for two main reasons, apart from the obvious
refineries and petrochemical plants, aiming at statement that thermodynamic principles can
and achieving high energy efficiency of the indi- hardly be described as outdated.
Firstly, the optimum in design is a moving
vidual processes, as well as of the whole site. It
deserves its special place in the hierarchy of target. Process plants that have been optimised
design methodologies because of the exactness today may not operate in an optimal fashion in
of the fundamental principles that it uses, its the future. Many pinch revamps in existing
simplicity, the magnitude of design improve- refineries and petrochemicals have been carried
ments/benefits that it brings about, and its wide out not because the original design was suboptimal at the time, but because the optimum has
applicability.
However, the fact that Pinch Technology moved since the plant was commissioned. What
provides a final methodology, in the point in was not economical to install 30 years ago may
time when not many new processing facilities be economical now. Even the pinch and/or
are being built, or are expected to be built in the energy projects that have been carried out only
near future, led to occasional remark that pinch 10 years ago should be reviewed against the
technology may be obsolete.4 Proponents of this changing economics, because the cost of energy

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September 2013 1

Figure 2 Different Positioning of the Composite Curves

grows faster than the plant construction cost

(Figure 1). This renders viable those projects
that have previously been considered uneconomical. Pinch Technology is a design tool that
guides optimum retrofits. In fact, its retrofit
theory is more complex than the theory of
designing new units and it is still developing.
Secondly, Pinch Technology helps the operating engineer to understand and manage a range
of process issues that are related to day-to-day
operation of their process units.
The present paper focuses on this last area of
applicability of Pinch Technology, i.e. its use in
the daily work of the operating engineer, but
also aims to provide useful revamp guidelines.

Pinch Technology A Brief Description

The Pinch principles have been described extensively in chemical engineering literature.1,2,3
Essentially, Pinch Technology is a technique that
is used to analyse heat availability in process
hot streams and to match it against the heat
demand of suitable cold streams, in an optimum
fashion. This optimises the preheating of the
cold streams by using hot streams waste heat,
and saves fuel in furnaces and other heaters. The
technique owes its name to the discovery and
the conceptual importance of the thermodynamic pinch point the point of the closest
temperature approach between the combined
hot and cold heat availability curves. This thermodynamic bottleneck limits the recoverability
of the hot streams energy.
Pinch Technology has four principal functions:

2 September 2013

Energy
versus
capital
targeting
and
optimisation.
Design of optimum heat exchange networks.
Optimisation of the use of utilities.
Revamping of existing networks.
These functions are briefly described below.

Energy and capital targeting and optimisation

The energy targets for the optimum use of
energy are determined ahead of designing a unit.
The methodology is based on the use of heat
availability curves (the Composite Curves
Figure 2), and the optimisation of capital cost
(exchanger area) versus energy cost (fuel), to
calculate energy targets the optimum achievable heat recovery, and hence the optimum
energy consumption of a process. Composite
curves represent heat availability and heat
demand profiles. When superimposed, they
show the recoverable energy (where curves overlap), and the external heating and cooling
requirements (the uncovered parts of the
curves). Moving the curves apart illustrates the
effect of increasing the temperature approach
between the composites: this reduces the
required exchanger area, but also reduces heat
recovery between hot and cold composite, thus
increasing the consumption of both heating and
cooling energy (case B in Figure 2).

Heat Exchanger Network Design

Pinch Technology further provides the design
methodology which ensures that the pinch
targets are met in the actual design. An intro-

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duction and the explanation of the design

methodology can be found in.2 Today, this is to a
large extent a computer-led process.

Optimisation of the use of utilities

(utility placement)
The utility-placement function is based on the
use of Grand Composite Curves (GCC), whereby
the cost of the targeted energy is minimised by
utilising a cheaper utility for example by using
low pressure steam instead of high pressure
steam or fuel, where possible. While Composite
Curves show the total demand of the heating
and cooling utilities, the GCC shows the distribution of this demand in various temperature
intervals of the heat transfer region, and
are used to determine how much of the
lower temperature utility can be optimally used.
The Grand Composite curve in Figure 3
shows how the heating target can be met by
using HP (high pressure) steam (left), but also
illustrates the option of partly using LP (low
pressure) steam and reduce the use of HP steam
(right).

Heat Exchanger Network Revamp

The network revamp algorithm is a complex and

an ever developing feature of Pinch Technology.

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Figure 3 The Use of Grand Composite Curve

Its complexity is due to numerous constraints

that the existing design poses. Today, the
revamp algorithm is based on the Path Pinch
concept.1,2 The methodology guides the process
of adding new area strategically and economically, with minimum network modifications.

Using Pinch Technology in Operations

The above several functions of Pinch Technology
can be applied to a number of situations that
may be of interest to an operating engineer.
These situations are briefly described below.

September 2013 3

Figure 5 A Stream Split

Understanding Heat Exchanger Networks

Operators do observe the peculiar behaviour of
heat exchange networks, and they often understand them fully. In complex configurations
however, such as preheat trains of refinery distillation units or catalytic crackers, not all
eccentricities are readily explained, and
improved understanding of the systems misbehaviour may lead to operational improvements.
For example, operators observe that cleaning
different exchangers produces different effects -

Figure 6 Effect of Stream Split Ratio

4 September 2013

some seem to be more important than others.

Similarly, adding surface area to one shell proves
to be more cost effective than to another.
However, neither of these two observations leads
to a straightforward and intuitive conclusion
that the improvement action should be centred
on the exchangers at the hot end of the network.
Consider the example preheat train shown in
Figure 4. The effect of adding heat exchanger
area on furnace coil inlet temperature (CIT) is
examined.
Adding area to exchanger E-7 is more cost
effective than adding it to other exchangers.
Especially ineffective is addition to E-10,
although this exchanger is located at the hot end
of the preheat train. A careful reader will observe
that E-10 operates at a tight temperature
approach already.
Stream splits represent another example. The
splits are incorporated in the network design
with a purpose, which may not just be the pressure drop reduction. Consequently, it is
important how the stream splits are balanced.
Consider the vacuum distillation unit preheat
train shown in Figure 5.
The optimum stream split is not at 50/50. By
reducing the flow through exchanger E-3 to 42%
of the total flow, the preheat temperature
increases by 1.3 C, saving $72,000/year in that

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particular case (at the fuel cost of 9.5 $/GJ)

see Figure 6.
Understanding the Pinch Technology topics of
cross-pinch heat transfer and area utilisation
enables the operator to gain command over the
related operational issues:
Cross Pinch Pinch design rules specify that
heat transfer between hot and cold streams
should be confined to one side of the pinch
diagram. Hot stream above the pinch should
preheat cold streams above the pinch, and a
similar rule applies to those below the pinch. If
by a design error, however, an above-pinch hot
stream is used to preheat a below-pinch cold
stream (e.g. a hot residue stream generating LP
steam), the net energy consumption of the
process will increase. Eliminating cross-pinch
heat transfer is an essential part of any network
improvement and revamp effort.
Area utilisation Tmin at the pinch point is a
key network design parameter, which, when
chosen well, ensures that an optimum between
capital and energy cost is struck. In a new
design, there is no reason for any exchanger to
have a lower T at either its hot or cold end,
than the pinch Tmin. However, suboptimal
designs show both high and low Ts, meaning
that either the exchanger area, or the temperature driving force are not economically utilised.
Adding area to a sub-optimally placed exchanger
(or cleaning it) may not be cost effective. The
optimum use of surface area is achieved in
designs that approach vertical heat transfer
between the appropriate parts of the cold and
hot composites in the temperature intervals of
the Composite Curves. Seven such intervals are
shown in Figure 7. The suboptimal design, where
this close-to-vertical match is not achieved, will
feature Ts being too high or too low, is sometimes referred to as crisscrossing - illustrated
for intervals 4 and 5 in the inset of Figure 7.

Daily Optimisation
Some operational issues addressable by Pinch
analysis have already been described above, for
example the optimisation of stream splits. But
there are others. Of particular interest in distillation units is the optimum use of pumparound
heat removal.
Distillation columns are heat-balanced by
removing heat at the top (condensing the overheads against cooling water or air, and sending

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Figure 7 Illustration of Vertical Heat Transfer and

Crisscrossing

cold reflux down the column), or by removing

heat in the columns side coolers called pumparounds (P/A). The lower the pumparounds
position down the column, the higher is its
temperature. P/As high temperature heat can be
used to preheat the feed to the furnace.
From the energy efficiency point of view, it is
desirable to maximise pumparound heat recovery into the feed, because this directly saves
furnace fuel. The principles of Pinch Technology
teach us that the higher temperature heat is
more useful in the preheat train, and more
versatile than the low temperature heat. Because
of this the recovery of bottoms pumparound
(BPA) heat is more effective in terms of energy
efficiency than the recovery of top pumparounds
(TPA) heat. However, cooling the column in the
side coolers reduces column reflux and adversely
affects fractionation, the product quality and the
yields.
Clearly, this is an energy-versus-yield optimisation issue, and is usually addressed by a
combined energy and yield optimisation of the
column. P/A heat recovery improvements may
include non-investment measurements such as
increasing pumparound flow rate, or investment
projects for example adding heat exchange
area to the pumparound circuit, shifting heat
removal from one pumparound to another, or

September 2013 5

Figure 8 Composites Positioned to Match the Observed

preheat T

replacing column trays with more efficient ones,

enabling higher P/A heat removal rates without
adversely affecting fractionation.

Fouling Management: Cleaning Cycle

Optimisation
Exchanger fouling may cause large energy losses
in complex preheat trains. Much improvement
and cost saving can be achieved by understanding the fouling mechanism and how it affects
heat transfer - not only in individual exchangers,
but of the whole network. Just as adding area to
one exchanger can be more effective than to
another, so can be exchanger cleaning. Because
the two processes are governed by the same
principles, it is important to implement some
kind of fouling monitoring and carry out
exchanger cleaning before embarking on pinch
analysis or a revamp study.

Using Pinch Targeting for Energy Benchmarking

and Gap Analysis of the Existing Units
Benchmarking the energy performance of an
existing unit is a typical Pinch task for the site
energy manager. The exercise is largely based on
Pinch analysis and the use of Composite Curves,
particularly when benchmarking crude oil distillation units, hydrocrackers, hydrotreaters, and
FCC units, where the efficiency gaps associated
with suboptimal heat integration tend to be
dominant when compared with other energy
gaps (such as furnace efficiency, process charac-

6 September 2013

teristics, or power generation efficiency).

Consider Figure 8. The composite curves for
an existing process unit are drawn and positioned relative to each other so that the actual
(observed) feed preheat temperature is matched.
The resulting T at the pinch indicates the Tmin
with which a well designed preheat train would
match the performance of the existing train.
Now consider again Figure 2 (b) showing a
distillation unit Composite Curves. Suppose that
the actual preheat temperature is 265 C. The
curves in Fig. 2 are positioned so that the
diagram predicts this observed preheat temperature. The resulting Tmin is 50 C, meaning that
the performance of the actual preheat train is
equivalent to the performance of a pinch-designed train with a Tmin of 50 C at the pinch.
Let us now assume that we found that the optimum design Tmin would in this case be 30 C. If
the train were designed with this Tmin in mind,
the preheat temperature would be 280 C Figure 2 (a). With the help of this knowledge,
the new, reduced, furnace duty, and therefore
the energy consumption gap associated with
the suboptimal design of the preheat train can
then be calculated.
It is normally not feasible (technically or
economically) to revamp an existing train to
match the performance of the optimum grassroots train, but nevertheless, a substantial part
of the gap can normally be closed by economically feasible projects. The next section describes
how to realistically estimate the potential gap
closure.

Finding Scope for Improvement:

Revamp Targeting
The inefficiencies that are typically found in
existing preheat trains are:
High design Tmin at the pinch mainly a
result of insufficient exchanger area installed in
the first place.
Cross-pinch heat transfer resulting from
poor exchanger positioning.
Poor exchanger area utilisation resulting
from poor exchanger positioning, criss-crossing,
and perhaps too much area employed in a wrong
place.
The benchmarking procedure described above
finds the efficiency gap between the actual and
the optimally design preheat train. The use of
revamp targeting methodology establishes how

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much of this gap can be closed via economical

projects, and forms the basis for capital expenditure plan for cost-effective retrofit.
The retrofit projects fall broadly into three
main categories:
Projects aimed at increasing heat recovery
from hot streams by recovering heat currently
wasted to air/water coolers.
Projects aimed at maximising the use of low
cost utility for example replacing high pressure
steam with low pressure steam, or replacing part
of furnace duty with steam heating, where
possible.
Projects that address other energy-related
process issues such as unit debottleneckng,
capacity or processing severity increase, pressure
drop reduction, etc.
The development of the methodology for
revamp targeting has a long history, and the
research efforts continue. This is because finding
the optimum solution, technically and economically, in a multiple-constraint problem such as
the revamp of an existing preheat train is a very
complex task. The main issues are:
What is the correct Tmin for revamps?
How to best use the existing exchanger area?
How to minimise area addition?
How to remove the constraints imposed by the
existing heat exchanger network configuration?
In a grassroots design the capital/energy
trade-off is found by optimising the Tmin at the
pinch. The grassroots curve (Figure 9) shows
the area versus energy function, along which lies
the grassroots optimum its position is determined by optimising Tmin in the area versus
energy trade-off.
An existing design, shown by the red dot in
Figure 9, will lie above the grassroots curve,
because it will not perform better than a grassroots pinch design. The grassroots optimum case
would have lower surface area than the existing
design. However, in a revamp situation, there is
usually no benefit from not using the existing
area, and the objective is therefore to make the
best use of what is already installed. Ideally, the
designer would want to proceed horizontally,
maintaining the same area, but using it better, in
order to reduce energy consumption. This would
be possible if the existing network were elastic,
i.e. if the network structure could be easily
changed and the surface area could be easily
re-distributed among exchangers. This is rarely

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Figure 9 Grassroots Design Area Utilisation Curve

possible. A realistic revamp project will follow a

curve that represents increased area requirements and reduced energy requirement, as
shown in Figure 9. A curve with better economics is closer to the grassroots curve.
The designers objective in setting a retrofit
target is to develop a targeting curve that
provides best economics after accounting for any
practical issues and constraints. This can be
accomplished by using the area efficiency
concept.2, 3 Area efficiency measures the effectiveness of the surface area employed in a
network, taking the grassroots case as the basis.
Area efficiency is defined as the ratio of the
grassroots area target (at the existing energy
consumption) and the existing network area. To
develop a retrofit targeting curve, an assumption
is made that a good retrofit will at least maintain
the existing surface area efficiency, i.e. =
constant. Based on the =constant assumption,
a retrofit targeting curve is developed, which
maintains the same area efficiency as the existing design. Today, this is largely a software-led
process.

Identifying Effective Improvement Projects

In simple heat exchanger systems, involving one
or two exchangers, the improvement options are
intuitive, and may be found by inspection. They
may involve adding area to a single exchanger,
using some form of heat transfer enhancements
(e.g. twisted tubes), or moving exchanger shells
around and re-piping.
However, in complex networks a systematic
approach is needed to maximise the improve-

September 2013 7

Figure 10 Exchanger showing Cross-Pinch Heat Transfer

the hot end approach temperature is

significantly greater than the cold end
T.
Depending on the location of the
exchanger in the system, this can
result in a large proportion of the
exchanger duty being cross-pinch.
The way to correct the cross-pinch
transfer is shown in Figure 11. The
original exchanger now only carries
out the duty from E to B on the hot
side, and C to J on the cold side
(exchanger 1). The remaining cold side
duty (J to D) is now carried out by a
new, lower temperature hot stream
(H to I) in exchanger 3, while the
remaining hot side duty (A to E) is
used to heat a higher temperature
cold stream (F to G) in exchanger 2.
The new stream F to G could be steam
generation or stream H to I could be
steam use.
Clearly, correcting exchangers which
show this kind of cross-pinch involves
investment.

Systematic Revamp Approach

Figure 11 Correction of Cross Pinch Heat Transfer

ment potential. This implies application of

computer based revamp techniques involving the
concepts of Path Pinch, utilising the networks
loops and paths and introducing enabling
projects when the network is found constrained.
Very often, the design inefficiencies result
from cross-pinch heat exchange. There is a
simplified procedure that a plant engineer may
employ to find potential improvements in
simpler networks.

DIY Cross-Pinch Elimination Procedure

Many cross-pinch inefficiencies arise from
exchanger matches such as that shown in Figure
10. This exchanger recovers heat from the hot
stream (being cooled from A to B) into the cold
stream (being heated from C to D). While the
exchanger has a tight temperature approach at
its cold end, the driving forces increase as the
stream temperatures increase. Because of this

8 September 2013

A full study of a network revamp

involves software application. Modern
approaches to network improvement
seek to squeeze the best possible
performance out of the existing units
and minimise the need for new exchangers.
Typical retrofits may involve surface area
enhancing equipment, such as tube inserts and
twisted tube exchangers, and often one new
exchanger or exchanger shell, but will avoid
extensive changes to the network.
These techniques include the use of loops
and paths within a network. Paths are the heat
flow trails within the network that connect the
cold and the hot utilities. Because of this any
improvement in the heat recovery along a path
can reduce the consumption of both utilities. A
loop is a closed energy path within the network.
In a retrofit design, paths form the basis of Path
Pinch, which addresses the additional
constraints imposed by a specific configuration
of the existing facility. The methodology is aimed
specifically at finding the best energy savings for
the least investment cost.
Existing networks can usually be improved by

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Figure 12 Example CDU preheat train

using paths to shift the loads between exchangers, but eventually a design will be reached from
which no further improvement is possible,
although it is still far from the Pinch target. The
initial network configuration imposes a
constraint that hinders further improvement.
Path Pinch analysis identifies the heat
exchanger forming the bottleneck to increasing
heat recovery and provides a systematic
approach for removing this bottleneck. It is a
step-by-step method for implementing energy
savings in a series of consecutive projects.
Once the offending exchanger is identified, the
following five options can be considered for
removing the constraint:
Re-sequencing reversing the order of
exchangers to improve heat recovery.
Re-piping changing the matched streams to
improve heat recovery.
Adding a new shell to an exchanger to
change the load on the offending exchanger
Increasing the performance of an exchanger
could include installing a twisted tube bundle,
tube inserts and/or helical baffles.
Adding a new exchanger to change the load
on the offending exchanger.
Stream splitting to reduce the load on a
stream in the offending exchanger.
This is a software-led process, so that all possible paths in the network are explored and new

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ones identified by, for example, placing one new

exchanger. Each path is then tested to see how
much energy can be economically squeezed from
that path, and the various paths are ranked in
terms of their potential energy saving. The Path
Pinch revamp method is sequential, but it examines various configurations in a systematic way,
at the same time allowing the designer to interact with the software-led design procedure.

Intuitive Versus Path Pinch Revamp:

A Case Study
There is no doubt that a skilled process engineer
can identify certain network improvement
projects by inspection, using intuition, experience, simulation, perhaps starting with the DIY
approach presented above. By referring to the
calculated Pinch target, the engineer can estimate the performance gap closure, resulting
from those projects.
The Case Study presented here takes a real
industrial example and addresses how much
energy saving can be identified by intuitive
projects, and how much would be missed out in
terms of potential energy savings by relying
solely on inspection/intuition, and not applying
a systematic revamp approach.
Consider the preheat train of an atmospheric
crude oil distillation unit (CDU) shown in Figure
12.

September 2013 9

Figure 13 Intuitive Revamp

A Pinch targeting exercise would reveal that

the actual preheat train performs as if designed
for Tmin of 85C, while the economic optimum
would be 37C. The actual feed preheat temperature is 255C, while it could be 290C in a
preheat train designed in accordance with pinch
principles. The efficiency gap between the actual
and the pinch designed cases is 22.7 MW,
worth $7.9 million/year at the assumed fuel cost
of $40/MWh. Can this gap be closed, and if so,
how tight?
Some of the built-in inefficiencies of the
example exchanger network are obvious:
The residue stream is sent hot to water cooler
C1. This stream could be used to preheat feed
The overheads heat is lost to air-cooled
condenser C3. This may be recoverable.
There is a suspect cross-pinch exchange E2,
where hot heavy gasoil stream is used against
very cold feed.

Intuitive Projects
It seems logical to add area to exchanger E6 and
recover more of the reside heat. Aiming for Tmin
of 35C in this enlarged exchanger, 1967 m2 of
new area can be installed, saving 7.5 MW of
furnace fuel, worth $2.6 million/year. The
investment cost is estimated at $3.9 million,
offering a simple payback of 1.5 years. This is

10 September 2013

undoubtedly a good project. A skilled engineer

will however immediately notice that if area is
added to E6, exchanger E7 will lose temperature
driving force, and will have to be enlarged too,
in order to maintain constant bottom pumparound duty (BPA). After some consideration,
and area balancing between E6 and E7, the
engineer will find that the size of E6 needs to be
increased by 1,700 m2, and that of E7 by 930 m2
(area of E6 is increased until E7 becomes
pinched). The two intuitive projects, combined,
would increase feed preheat to 272C, and save
11.6 MW of furnace fuel. The investment cost is
estimated at $5.1 million, offering a simple
payback of 1.3 years. The resulting preheat train
is shown in Figure 13.
This is about how far intuition can take us.
One may observe that as E6 becomes pinched, it
seems logical to add area to E8 as well. This may
de-pinch E6, and allow adding more area
economically to E6 (shifting area between E6
and E8). This optimisation however is not
entirely intuitive. Using the column overheads
heat may be considered another obvious
opportunity, but this is a low-grade, below-pinch
heat, which in theory does not improve heat
recovery. There is no obvious place for it.
The 11.6 MW of improvement is pretty good,
but it will be shown that in this particular case
17.3 MW savings are possible. So, there are,
obviously, some non-obvious projects, and this
is a typical situation in which Path Pinch
proves powerful.

Path Pinch Projects

KBCs SuperTargetTM was used to identify Path
Pinch projects. Path Pinch achieves energy
savings by adding area strategically and making
limited structural changes to the network. Path
Pinch algorithm assesses the network to find
heat-recovery paths. These connect hot and cold
utilities via exchangers, so that any additional
heat recovery along a path reduces the use of
both utilities.
SuperTarget finds and analyses all paths in
turn, to identify the most economical ones to
exploit, and to maximise heat recovery with minimum investment. One such path is shown in a
grid diagram1 in Figure 14. Increasing heat recovery along a path can be continued until the path
becomes pinched, and no further improvement
can be made. This is when enabling changes are

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proposed to remove bottlenecks and allow the algorithm

to exploit new paths to achieve
further energy reductions.

Path Pinch 1

The first Path Pinch project

identified exploits the path
shown in Figure 14. The
project is similar to the intuitive project shown in Figure
13 above, and consists of
adding area to E6 (+1,862
m2), E7 (+785 m2) and E8
(+195 m2), until E7 becomes
pinched. The fuel savings Figure 14 Illustration of a Path
amount to 12.4 MW. The
required investment is $5.5 million, offering a of the enabling project will save additional 2.7
simple payback of 1.3 years slightly higher MW of furnace fuel, reaching total savings of
energy savings (by 0.8 MW), with a similar 15.1 MW, with 1,100 m2 of new area.
return on investment as the intuitive project.
After the project is considered for technical Path Pinch 2
viability, available space, pressure drop, safety The optimised enabling project allows a new
etc., and accepted by the engineer, the method- iteration, which now finds it economical to add
ology can be re-applied to identify the next best more area to debottleneck the downstream
project. In the example case, however, the algo- exchangers, particularly E3, E5 and E7. With the
rithm finds that after Path Pinch 1 project is total new area of 1,522 m2 over Path Pinch 1, the
implemented, a limit is reached, and no further savings increase to 16.1 MW.
improvement can be made by simply adding
area to existing exchangers, although the ineffi- Path Pinch 3
ciencies remain, such as cross-pinching, and Finally, in another iteration, the Path Pinch
wasting of the Overheads heat and a part of the algorithm finds its last economically viable
project, which is the addition of a new residue
Residue heat.
exchanger (430 m2) downstream of E6. With
this, the cumulative savings reach 17.3 MW.
Enabling Project
Of the total identified efficiency gap of 22.7
The bottleneck can be removed by installing a
heat exchanger below the pinch, to recover the MW, the combined Path Pinch projects therefore
Overheads heat upstream of exchanger E3. It close about 80%. Although there seems to be
will need to have an area of 200 m2 and a duty still room for improvement left, further improveof 4.3 MW, but on its own it only saves 1 MW in ments beyond Path Pinch 3 are small and
furnace duty. It is a so-called enabling project. uneconomical.
It is appropriate to comment here that the
The engineer will notice that in order to maintain a constant top pumparound (TPA) duty in performance gap can almost never be completely
E3, this exchanger will require additional area closed - the constraints imposed by the existing
too. Therefore, some projects will have to imme- configuration normally make it impossible to
diate follow the enabling project, but Path Pinch reach Pinch targets in revamp situation. This is
will attempt to extract the maximum benefit the usual price to be paid for a suboptimal initial
from the enabling project. In our particular case design.
The final revamp is shown in Figure 15. The
this optimisation will include adding area to E3,
and slightly increasing the areas of E6, E7 and summary of all projects is presented in table
E8 relative to the above Path Pinch 1 project. overleaf.
In summary, the actual saving potential of the
Compared to Path Pinch 1, the optimised version

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September 2013 11

Figure 15 Final Revamp

Summary of all projects

1
2
3
4

Project
Intuitive 2
Path Pinch 1 (Alternative to Intuitive 2)
Enabling and Path Pinch 2 (Incremental)
Path Pinch 3
Total (items 2,3, and 4)

Savings, MW
11.6
12.4
3.7
1.2
17.3

example network is 17.3 MW. The saving

projects identifiable by intuition can reach 11.6
MW, and further savings are only enabled by
systematic approach and Path Pinch. They
amount to 5.7 MW.

Conclusion
The authors ambition was to provide evidence
that Pinch Technology should continue to be
regarded as indispensible tool in optimising
process units with respect to energy efficiency, at
both engineers and operators levels. It is useful
that the operators understand the Pinch principles
and how they can be used to improve the performance of existing process units, and not just
pertain to new designs and large revamp work.
When applied to existing heat exchanger
networks, the knowledge of Pinch Technology can
assist an operator in finding operational improvements, understanding and calculating the effects
of exchanger fouling, benchmarking the energy
performance of their processes, and perhaps identifying improvements from simple modifications.

12 September 2013

Investment, million $
5.13
5.50
3.51
1.17
10.2

Payback, years
1.3
1.3
2.7
2.8
1.7

An experienced engineer can venture into

designing preheat train revamps, by inspection,
using intuition and simulation. There is no
doubt that some, effective energy improvement
projects can be identified by such procedure.
They close 65% of the efficiency gap in the
presented example case, but the remaining 35%
of the gap can only be identified by using the
systematic Path Pinch method.
A definite advantage of a systematic approach
is that it leaves no doubt, and no room for speculation if the selected projects are the best
available. The uncertainty and non-systematicity
of the intuitive approach is often quoted as one
of the reasons for projects not finding their way
into corporate financial plans.
The final 35% of gap closure that results from
the systematic approach may not look overwhelmingly important, but it may be
indispensible when the last 35% of efficiency
improvement can be the differentiator in todays
world of competitive refining, where refineries
and petrochemicals try to squeeze out every

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percentage of their resource efficiency, be it

energy, environmental or other.
References
1 For a brief description of Pinch Technology see: Managing CO2
Emissions in the Chemical Industry (edited by y Hans-Joachim
Leimkhler) - Chapter 6: Milosevic Z, Eastwood A, Heat Integration
and Pinch Analysis, Wiley-VCH, 2010.
2 For a comprehensive description of Pinch Technology see: I C
Kemp, Pinch Analysis and Process Integration A User Guide on
Process Integration for the Efficient Use of Energy, ButterworthHeinemann, 2007.
3 For an all-encompassing account of Pinch Technology for expert
users see: U V Shennoy, Heat Exchanger Network Synthesis, Gulf
Publishing Co., 1995.
4 The actual remark was made by a speaker at the 2010 ENI Energy
Conference in Rome. The authors witnessed similar statements
having been made on several other occasions.

energy optimisation, Pinch Technology, and sustainability and

efficient use of resources.
Allan Rudman is Vice President of Energy Services with KBC the
integrated business resulting from the acquisition of Linnhoff
March in 2002. During his 20-year career with KBC, he has advised
refining and petrochemical clients in a number of European,
Russian, Asian, South American and US countries on improving
energy efficiency. Utilising his engineering background, Allan
has played a leading role in the development of energy services
technology, including training, development and methodology
guidelines. Allan holds a First Class Honours degree in Chemical
Engineering from Bradford University in the UK & is a Fellow of the
Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Richard Brown Richard Brown is a consultant with KBC Process
Technology Ltd, working in the Energy Optimisation group. He
is managing energy and heat integration studies in refining and
petrochemical industries. Brown holds BS degree in Chemical
Engineering from the University of Bradford.

LINKS
Dr Zoran Milosevic is a principal consultant with KBC Process
Technology and an internationally renewed authority on energy
optimization and profit improvement of oil refineries and
petrochemical plants. He has over 40 published papers and
articles on energy efficiency, refinery/petrochemicals profitability
improvement, and energy economics. He teaches at various
institutions and has given courses in energy economics, refinery

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