Process industry energy retrofits: the importance of emission baselines for greenhouse gas reductions

• AbstractFuel combustion for heat and/or electric power production is often the largest contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissionsfrom an industrial process plant. Economically feasible options to reduce these emissions include fuel switching and retrofitting theplants energy system. Process integration methods and tools can be used to evaluate potential retrofit measures. For assessing theGHG emissions reduction potential for the measures considered, it is also necessary to define appropriate GHG emission baselines.This paper presents a systematic GHG emission calculation method for retrofit situations including improved heat exchange,integration of combined heat and power (CHP) units, and combinations of both. The proposed method is applied to five differentindustrial processes in order to compare the impact of process specific parameters and energy market specific parameters. Forpotential GHG emission reductions the results from the applied study reveal that electricity grid emissions are significantly moreimportant than differences between individual processes. Based on the results of the study, it is suggested that for sustainableinvestment decision considerations a conservative emission baseline is most appropriate. Even so, new industrial CHP in theNorthern European energy market could play a significant role in the common effort to decrease GHG emissions.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Kemi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Chemical Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Greenhouse gas reduction

Process integration

Emission baselines

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)