Energy Audit of the Water Steam Circuit Using the ISO 50001 Standard: Application Sulfuric Acid Production Process

Population growth, climate change, and cultural water usage style exacerbate water and energy resource scarcities. The energy and water saving is a specially important topic in the industrial sector nowadays. For this reason, the present paper aims to improve the energy efficiency of the water-steam circuit of the sulfuric acid production process following the International Standard ISO 50001. In this perspective, an energy diagnosis has been realized in order to analyze the energy consumption of the site using a statistical analysis. Then, it energetically integrates the process of sulfuric acid, and tries to recover the heat released using the Pinch methodology. This study enabled us to deduce the optimal steam network which controls expansion valves that are often left open for no reason, and solves tripping problems. The energy integration using the pinch method was carried out to design an optimal heat exchange network, with a minimum number of exchange units. We noticed that the number of heat exchangers can be reduced significatly using advanced technologies.