Minimizing Hot and Cold Utility Requirements for Vegetable Oil Refinery Plant Using Pinch Analysis

Pinch technology is applied on various process flow diagrams from process industries using different strategies or techniques. These techniques include both graphical procedure (Thermal Pinch diagram) as well as algebraic procedure (Temperature interval diagrams) in order to compare the minimum heating and cooling utility requirement of a process with the actual requirement. In this present research work, the process flow diagram of vegetable oil refinery received from an industry. The hot and cold streams are identified and Pinch analysis technology is applied in order to find out the minimum heating and cooling utility requirement. Hot utility reduction is around 21.3% while the cold utility reduction is around 10.2% by Graphical method while the percentage of hot utility reduction is 8.3% and that of cold utility is 4.0% by Algebraic method therefore, the application of graphical method is recommended.