With the construction of two new heat exchangers, the Cepsa Chemical Plant in Palos has managed to reduce the steam consumption required for phenol production by harnessing the eat discharged in the cooling tower during cumene production. Additionally, the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere has been reduced.
How did we do it?
During the development of the YET project in Line 3 (Machine Learning and Advanced Analytics), it was discovered that the energy from the cumene streams in the “Cumene 2” plant could be transferred to the feed stream of the “Phenol 3” oxidation unit instead of being cooled with cooling water. Different departments of the Palos chemical plant, in collaboration with external companies, carried out the engineering and construction od the new equipment. Because “together, we create more value”.
The result
Once all the changes have been implemented, we are now able to produce phenol with lower energy costs and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. In other words, the construction of two heat exchangers will enable an estimated steam savings of 31,920 tons per year, which corresponds to avoiding the emissions of 5,554 tons of CO2 equivalents.
