CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In this paper an assessment related to a process integration facility of a hydrogen rich stream in an ethylene production plant is presented. A hydrogen rich byproduct stream coming from the separation sector of the ethylene plant is reused for steam and power generation in the utility plant. The main advantage of this reuse option is that the byproduct stream has a higher heating value and less CO2 emissions than the natural gas used as fuel in the utility plant. The utility plant model includes continuous operating variables as temperature and pressure of the high, medium and low pressure steam headers and deareator pressure and binary operating variables for driver selection between electrical motors or steam turbines for some process units. A MINLP problem is formulated in GAMS to optimally select the continuous and binary operating conditions. At the optimal point, electrical motors are switched to steam turbines because the latter have a smaller ratio of CO2 emissions to power generated, due to the fact that residual gas, rich in hydrogen, is burned with natural gas reducing the CO2 emissions.