Evaluation and analysis of exergoeconomic performance for the calcination process of green petroleum coke in vertical shaft kiln

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to establish a mathematical framework to analyze the complex thermal economic performance of the calcination process. To find the factors affecting exergy efficiency loss, different exergy destruction is investigated in detail. Furthermore, the exergy flow cost model for exergy cost saving has also been developed. The results show that the vertical shaft furnace is a self-sufficiency equipment without additional fuel required, but the overall exergy destruction accounts for 54.11% of the total exergy input. In addition, the energy efficiency of the waste heat recovery boiler and thermal deaerator are 83.52% and 96.40%, whereas the exergy efficiency of the two equipment are 65.98% and 94.27%. Furthermore, the import exergy flow cost of vertical shaft furnace, waste heat recovery boiler and thermal deaerator are 366.5197 RMB/MJ, 0.1426 RMB/MJ and 0.0020RMB/MJ, respectively. Based on the result, several suggestions were proposed to improve the exergoeconomic performance. Assessing the performance of suggested improvements, the total exergy destruction of vertical shaft furnace is reduced to 134.34 GJ/h and the exergy efficiency of waste heat recovery boiler is raised up to 66.02%. Moreover, the import exergy flow cost of the three different equipment is reduced to 0.0329 RMB/MJ, 0.1304 RMB/MJ and 0.0002 RMB/MJ, respectively.