For dealing with high-salinity wastewater in the refinery, the high cost of driving heat source is the disadvantage of multi-effect distillation (MED) so it is of great importance to evaluate the performance of low-temperature heat source for conducting MED and select the optimal temperature for it. Both the MED and the low-temperature heat sources studied in this paper were from a typical refinery located in northwestern China. Besides, a new methodology to evaluate heat sources as the optimal candidate was proposed for MED based on the grey system theory. Five process units, which included 18 fluids of the refinery, were named as the evaluation projects. Three factors, which included safety effects, total costs and characteristics of low-temperature heat sources were determined as the evaluation indexes, the values of which were established through the analyses. The results obtained through the grey correlation analyses have revealed that the grey correlation degrees of these units were 0.661(AVDU), 0.732 (#1 FCCU), 0.618 (#2 FCCU), 0.535 (#1 DCU), and 0.572 (#2 DCU), respectively. Thus, the optimal heat source was provided from #1 FCCU. Through further analyses of the fluids from #1 FCCU, the grey correlation degrees of the fluids were 0.597 (oil and gas at top of tower), 0.714 (recycle oil and gas), and 0.512 (diesel), respectively. Thus, the optimal heat source was the oil and gas recycle stream.
Xue JianliangZhao DongfengLi ShiLiu WeiShen ChanchanChen Lu
In this paper, the research was focused on optimizing low-temperature heat recovery to adopt multi-effect distil- lation （MED） in desalination by pinch technology. And further analysis indicated that phase changes occurred during the heat recovery process. In such case, the feed stream was divided into two streams： the liquid feed stream and the gaseous feed stream. Through calculation, the optimal ATmin was established at 26℃, and the total cost of heat exchange process was only $1.098× 106. By using the Problem Table Algorithm for pinch analysis, the temperature of the hot and the cold steams was 119℃ and 93 ℃, respectively. At a temperature higher than 119 ℃, all heat of the hot stream could not be cooled by the condenser, and the minimum heat load of utility （QH.min） was 440457.64 kW; and at a temperature below 93 ℃, all heat of the cold stream could not be provided by the heater, and the minimum cold load of utility （QC.min） was 1965993.85 kW. Finally, the synthesis of heat exchanger network was established through integrating two heat exchanger networks.
