Energy integration of a xylitol producing plant, using a heat exchanger cycle

Abstract

The present work proposes an energy integration from a heat exchanger cycle inside a xylitol production plant, with the objective of reducing operating costs and emissions of polluting gases to the environment. From the xylitol production flowchart, it was possible to survey the hot streams that need to be cooled and the cold streams that need to be heated, and thus carry out the positioning of the heat exchangers in a cyclic format so that all the output streams of the heat exchangers are used, thus reducing consumption of utilities (steam and water) external to the process to heat or cool the equipment that needs to reach a certain temperature. The energy balance calculations for the process were performed for the two scenarios studied, without integration and with energy integration in the presence of a heat exchanger cycle. From these results it can be concluded that there was a reduction in the consumption of hot utilities (steam) of 100% and cold utilities (water) of 41.97%. Thus, it is possible to affirm that the energy integration by cycle of heat exchangers, in this case, made the process viable from the productive and environmental point of view, because in addition to the reductions in the production cost, due to the savings with hot utilities (steam) and cold utilities (water), it is also possible to reduce the emission of gases in the atmosphere.