20th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering ESCAPE20

S. Pierucci and G. Buzzi Ferraris (Editors)

2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Efficiency Analysis of Utilities Use in the Batch

Chemical Industry
Claude Rrat, Patrick Straehl, Stavros Papadokonstantakis, Konrad
Hungerbuehler
ETH Zurich,Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 10, 8093 Zurich, claude.rerat@chem.ethz.ch

Abstract
An efficiency analysis of the utilities consumption was performed by applying the
Bottom-up approach [1] to a batch chemical process. This modeling method is based on
the development of a detailed model for each particular unit operation for which real
process parameters measurements are necessary as input data. These were extracted
from the measurements archive of the case study plant for a period of two months and
were completed with direct measurements to close mass and energy balances. As a
result of this modeling a theoretical energy requirement for the different unit operations
was calculated and then compared with the real energy consumption. The latter was
determined from the utility flows involved in the unit operation. No direct flow
measurements were available for each unit and the regulated valve openings controlling
the distribution of utilities were used to obtain information about the utility
consumption. The conversion from valve opening to mass flow was made with two
different methods: a direct calibration of each valve opening with the help of flow meter
and a global calibration based on a multivariate regression analysis over a set of valves.
The first method was applied to liquid utilities (water, brine) and offered an accurate
calibration for each valve but was time consuming. The second which was used for
steam valves needed less measurement but presented some deviations when introduced
in the calculation of the real utility consumption especially for small flows. The
difference between the theoretical energy requirement and the real energy consumption
was then used to model the thermal losses based on empirical parametric equations [2]
considering the losses due to radiation and the internal losses in the heating/cooling
system due to inefficient operation. The parameters of the loss models were fitted over a
small number of batches and these values were then applied for the rest of the batches in
the examined period. The overall model was validated by incremental and integral
comparison with the real consumption during the case study period. A more detailed
analysis of the differences allows to spot inefficient usage of utilities and to define
priorities in process optimization by quantification of the potential energy savings.

Keywords: energy consumption modeling, energy efficiency, multiproduct batch plant,

plantwise valve calibration

1. Introduction
In the batch chemical industry energy consumption represents around 10% [2] of the
production cost and offers an interesting target for cost saving. This is especially true in
the specialty chemical industry where a large part of the production cost is fixed and
refers to the raw materials which give few opportunities for potential cost reductions.

C. Rrat et al.
The recent increase of the primary energy prices and the development of CO2 reduction
policy make the improvement of the energy consumption efficiency necessary. Batch
chemical industry presents some important saving potentials because the production
equipment is standardized and thus is not optimized for each operation. Furthermore the
large number of units used in batch production buildings with parallel production lines
running at the same time doesnt allow an accurate estimation of the energy use without
the help of a large number of sensors the installation of which implies an important
burden for the plant operation.
This study proposes a simple way to measure the utilities consumption at the unit level
and offers an analysis of their consumption efficiency through the determination of
thermal losses.

2. Procedure Description
The utilities consumption of a batch process in a multiproduct plant is analyzed using
the available process control data (PI data). The amount of utilities is calculated using
the control valve openings. As the valve opening is given in percentage a calibration is
necessary for each valve to convert these values to mass flow. Two different procedures
were applied to get the calibration curve: for the liquid utilities (water and brine) direct
measurements using an external ultrasonic flowmeter on the pipes were performed,
while for steam consumption a multivariate regression analysis based on all steam
valves of the building was used (i.e., every minute the sum of the flows from all valves
is compared with the overall steam consumption of the building), since a direct
flowmeter measurement was not available.
2.1. Installed flow characteristic
Installed flow characteristic refers to the flow of a control valve after its installation on
the pipe. This flow characteristic differs from the valve manufacturer specifications
because of variable pressure drop and influence of the geometry of the pipe. However
the flow characteristic can then be described by different models given in Eqn.(1) [3]
and Eqn.(2) [4]. For steam valves a model with only 2 parameters was selected in order
to have a small number of variables during the fitting and for water valves a model with
3 fitting parameters is used to represent the larger deviation of the flow compared to the
theoretical curve.

F=

F=

c1 VO 2

(Eqn. 1)

c2 + (1 c2 ) VO 4

c1

1 + c2 c32 (1VO ) 1

(Eqn. 2)

where F is the installed flow characteristic, c1, c2, c3 the fitting parameters and VO the
valve opening.
The initial values of the fitting parameters were estimated from valves specifications
like the maximal flowrate, the valve authority and the Kvs [4].
For the multivariate regression analysis of the steam valves a program was developed in
Matlab based on the method of the least squares to fit the parameters of Eqn.(1) with
the valve openings and the overall steam consumption (see Eqn. (3)).

Efficiency Analysis of the Utilities Use in the Batch Chemical Industry

An ensemble of 20 valves from the whole building was used in the multivariate
regression analysis.
n

FBuilding , t =
i =1

c1, i VOi2,t
c2, i + (1 c2, i ) VOi4,t

+ BC

(Eqn. 3)

where FBuilding,t is the overall steam consumption at interval t, c1, c2, c3 the fitting
parameters, VO the valve opening, t time interval, n number of steam valves and BC is
the base consumption of the building.
The base consumption of the building describes the steam consumption not related to
the process (building heating, hot water production, losses, etc.).
2.2. Bottom-up modeling
The Bottom-up modeling is based on the energy balance of each operation in the
process [2,5]. This method requires a large amount of data which can be classified into
4 groups: scheduling data (operation, time, units), equipment data (mass, surface,
nominal power), streams properties (compositions, physical properties) and process data
(process parameters used to control the system like reactor temperatures, weight of
reactant mass,etc.).
The energy consumption of one unit operation (UO) like a reactor can be described at
each time interval ti by Eqn. (4):
UO
UO
UO
Eutility
,i = ETheo ,i + E Loss ,i

= (m products ,i c p , products + mequip c p ,equip + mH / Csys c p , H / Csys ) Tproducts ,i (Eqn. 4)

UO
UO
+ mevap,i vap H + ri r H t EDiss
+ ELoss
,i

where the indices represent: products chemical mixture, equip equipment, evap
evaporation, H/Csys heating/cooling system, and the symbols are:
rH reaction
enthalpy, ri reaction rate, ti time interval, ETheo - the theoretical energy requirement,
EDiss - the dissipated mechanical energy calculated according to [5], and Eloss are energy
losses.
2.3. Thermal losses determination
The modeling of the thermal losses was performed using an empirical equation
describing two kinds of losses: thermal radiation through the external surface of
equipment and losses in the heating/cooling system of the equipment. This model
presented in Eqn. (5) has been previously proposed in an analysis of the steam
consumption in the batch industry [2].
UO
UO
UO
UO
b
ELoss
,i = Eutility ,i ETheo ,i = a ( ETheo ,i ) + k A (T products ,i Tamb ) ti

(Eqn. 5)

where Tamb ambient temperature, A surface of equipment, ti time interval, k

parameter for reactor surface thermal losses, a,b parameters for losses in
heating/cooling system.

C. Rrat et al.

3. Results
3.1. Multivariate regression analysis
Measurements of the valve openings and the overall steam consumption were taken
during 8 days with an interval of 1 minute.
A correction was made to eliminate the delay between the valve openings data and the
steam flowrate at the entrance of the building: for the multivariate regression analysis,
the selection of training sets was based on intervals of 5000 consecutives points with all
valves opened at least 50 minutes. Seven different training sets were studied. The best
training set has a correlation coefficient R2 of 0.792 and for the validation set the
corresponding R2 is 0.754. The base consumption of the building is 622 kg/h.
Table 1 presents the fitting parameters defined from the multivariate regression analysis
and Table 2 gives the results of the valve calibrations using a flowmeter.
Table 1. Fitting parameters for the steam valves of the studied process from the multivariate
regression analysis (overall R2 = 0.754). Only 5 valves were used in the studied process.

Kvs
Valve S1

3.49

Valve S2

14.04

Valve S3

14.04

Valve S4

14.04

Valve S5

8.99

Fitting parameters C1,C2

369
0
3490
1.16
443
0.004
277
10
1750
1.28

Confidence bounds
(with 95%)
39.1
0
0.01
0.68
26.4
0.002
39.2
0.01
0.23
0.43

Valve type
On/off
Regulated
Regulated
Regulated
Regulated

Table 2. Fitting parameters for the water valves of the studied process from the calibration with
ultrasonic flowmeter.

Kvs
Valve W1

40

Valve W2

40

Valve W3

40

Valve W4

25

Fitting parameters
C1,C2,C3
48.68
0.9675
61.65
72.94
0.0614
233.2
776.8
99.98
54.23
208.9
100
24.0

Confidence bounds
(with 95%)
2.23
0.4725
51.07
4.41
0.1001
406.5
65.3
18.75
7.56
70.9
0
25.3

R2

Valve type

0.998

Regulated

0.997

Regulated

0.997

Regulated

0.996

Regulated

Efficiency Analysis of the Utilities Use in the Batch Chemical Industry

The correlation coefficients for water valve calibrations are excellent but the confidence
bounds for the fitting parameters are quite large (see Table 2). This is the consequence
of the small number of measurements used in the fitting. The steam valve calibration
with thousands data points gives better confidence bounds but a worse correlation
coefficient (see Table 1).
Figures 1 and 2 give the comparison between measurement and theoretical modeling for
steam and water consumption respectively. The theoretical model predictions include
the thermal losses calculated on the basis of the fitted thermal losses coefficients
presented in Table 3.

Figure 1: Steam consumption per batch for the different steps of the process. The uncertainty
depicts the batch variability over the studied period.

Figure 2: Water consumption for the different steps of the process. The consumption is given for
the water consumption of one batch and the uncertainty is defined from batch variability over the
studied period.

C. Rrat et al.

Table 3. Thermal losses coefficients for the equipment using steam (equipment data: SS =
stainless steel, SE = glass lined steel). The performance of the models is given by the relative
difference between the cumulative amounts of steam calculated by the models including thermal
losses and steam measurements after 1 month.

Valve S1
(plate heat exchanger,2 m2)
Valve S2
(reactor, 8 m3, SE)
Valve S3
(reactor, 10 m3, SS)
Valve S4
(reactor, 10 m3, SE)
Valve S5
(rotary dryer, 4 m3, SS)

a [-]

b [-]

k [kW m-2 C-1]

Relative difference
[%]

1.20

0.80

0.056

5.8

5.93

0.49

0.003

9.2

6.80

0.79

0.100

4.5

2.33

0.68

0.033

6.8

4.12

0.65

0.120

6.2

The water consumption has a larger batch variability which denotes a worse control and
use than for steam consumption. The error bars are quite similar for models and for
measurements indicating a good representation of the consumption by the models.
Steam consumption models give good results compared to measurements: the relative
error for the consumption prediction after 1 month is less than 10% (see Table 3). This
can be explained by the conversion of energy calculations to amount of utilities: only
the vaporization enthalpy is needed for steam while for water a temperature difference
is necessary. This calculation implies more data with more uncertainty in the results.

4. Conclusions
A simple way to analyze the utilities consumption is presented through the use of the
control valve openings. Two different methods of valve calibration were investigated
and their results were used to fine-tune a theoretical model for the utilities consumption,
accounting also for the thermal losses. The results have shown that both methods offer
the possibility to represent the utilities flows with accuracy. This representation allows
the modeling of energy use at equipment level and the prediction of the utility
consumption.

References
[1] P. S. Bieler, U. Fischer, K. Hungerbuhler, Modeling the Energy Consumption of Chemical
Batch Plants: Bottom-Up Approach, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 43 (2004) 7785.
[2] A. Szijjarto, S. Papadokonstantakis, U. Fischer, K. Hungerbuhler, Bottom-up modeling of the
steam consumption in multipurpose chemical batch plants focusing on identification of the
optimization potential, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 47 (2008) 7323.
[3] J.H. Chan, Control Valve Selection and Sizing Engineering Design Guidelines, KLM
Technology Group, Johor Bahru, 2007
[4] H.L. Wade, (eds.), Basic and Advanced Regulatory Control: System Design and Application,
ISA The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, NC, 2004, pp. 359-363.