Principle and benefit of waste heat recovery and utilization of air compressor
With the rapid development of the machinery industry, the source energy crisis and environmental pollution have become serious problems that the countries of the world urgently need to solve. China has paid more and more attention to environmental protection work, and energy conservation and emission reduction have been taken as important tasks of the government.
As an indispensable equipment for production enterprises, industrial and mining enterprises often use air compressors, and often account for 50% of the total electricity consumption of the whole plant. It is estimated that the annual power consumption of air compressors is about 9.6% of the national industrial electricity consumption. The energy consumption of air compressors in key application areas is even more amazing. Among the coal chemical, petrochemical, fertilizer, electric power, metallurgical and other industries, air compressors consume more than 6% of electricity, and nitrogen-hydrogen air compressors consume more electricity. 70% of the electricity consumption of the ammonia plant; the electricity consumption of the ethylene “three machines” (cracking air compressor, ethylene air compressor and propylene air compressor) accounts for more than 30% of the electricity consumption of the ethylene unit, and a set of 100,000 air separation units The power of pumps, fans and air compressors in the company is nearly 80,000 kilowatts.
We know that the air compressor generates a lot of heat during operation, and the air-cooled unit discharges heat into the atmosphere; the water-cooled unit discharges heat into the atmosphere through the cooling tower. According to the statistics of the US Department of Energy: When the air compressor is running, the energy used to increase the potential energy of the air is only 15% of the total power consumption. About 85% of the electricity is converted into heat. It is discharged into the air in a cold or water-cooled manner.
If the heat of the air compressor is not discharged, it will affect the normal operation of the air compressor and affect the quality of the compressed air. Of course, if this heat is directly discharged, it will not only waste a lot of heat (pity) but also aggravate the "greenhouse effect" of the atmosphere and cause thermal pollution. In fact, for these wasted heat, the use of air compressor heat recovery technology, these seemingly redundant heat, a large part of which can be recycled!
How to make good use of these waste heat is an important task for enterprises to save energy and reduce emissions, and can create good benefits for enterprises while also contributing to the protection of the environment.