Principal benefits to the customer:
- Identifying and realising opportunities to minimise water and energy consumption
- Minimising energy water and effluent costs
- Meeting environmental obligations in the most appropriate manner
- Minimising carbon emissions
- Optimum solutions for the whole site/ avoiding wasted expenditure on non-optimal local solutions
- Maximum value from investment in energy and environmental improvement projects
- Identifying opportunities for improved efficiency before undertaking detailed design
- Ensuring that new developments are inherently energy efficient and environmentally sound
Integrated approach brings value for money
The conventional way of identifying energy and water savings on process plant is to generate a list of possible savings opportunities in each area of the site, to estimate the savings each might achieve and draw up a list of priorities.
This may identify significant savings in individual areas, but the resulting projects are not necessarily those of greatest overall benefit. Projects in one area often conflict with potential for savings in another and opportunities for greater savings on the site as a whole often remain undetected.
An integrated approach based on Process Integration methodology minimises the risk of these pitfalls. The integrated process-orientated approach identifies solutions with maximum overall benefit.
This combines traditional Chemical/Process Engineering methodology with systematic Process Integration procedures including Pinch analysis. Not only are the conventional savings projects identified but a structured and disciplined understanding of energy interactions on the site means that optimum overall solutions are defined.
Likewise, a systematic and integrated approach to environmental management identifies the best solutions. On a case by case basis, this may be end-of-pipe treatment, waste minimisation at source, change of process route, change in operating procedure or a combination of these and other solutions as appropriate.
The methodology used by HRCC is adapted for energy, environmental and general process studies from a portfolio of analytical techniques. These include Pinch technology, HAZOP, heat and material balance simulation, sensitivity analysis etc., as appropriate. This results in value for money efficiency improvements in a wide range of processes and is based on first-hand process integration experience in many sectors of the industry.