Optimizing profitability of acid plants through boner operating strategies

摘要

Optimizing plant profitability has always been an important aspect of operating any production plant, and this has of course also been true for sulfuric acid plants. The current environment of low prices for sulfuric acid and a majority of the products also sold by acid producers, such as metals and commodity chemicals, make optimization of plant performance evermore important to keep the business competitive. Changing the strategy for how the plant is operated has the potential of improving plant profitability, both short and long term with minor! or no investments required. Optimizing the operating strategy to improve plant profitability is going to be the focus of this paper. The strategies proposed focus on how the catalyst may be chosen and operated to improve plant profitability in a number of different ways. Campaign length can be improved, resulting in less downtime, turnaround costs and catalyst losses. Downtime and fuel consumption may be reduced by using the right catalyst and knowhow. Power consumption can be reduced by reducing plant and catalyst pressure drop, saving on energy costs. Finally, scrubber chemical consumption can be lowered by improving the conversion over the converter, resulting in savings on both chemical costs and potential by-product disposal. The benefits of the proposed strategies are illustrated in the paper by comparison to operational data from industrial sulfuric acid plants.