About
The Story of
Process Integration & Pinch Analysis
​Heat Integration proved to be a great success and was successfully implemented in the oil, chemical and energy industries. Based on this success, further developments into several other related fields, such as Mass Integration, Water Integration, and Equipment Integration followed.
The technology provides the answer to one of the major challenges in the design of heating and cooling systems, namely, the complexity of Energy and Power Integration, by providing a mapping strategy based on thermodynamically derived upper bounds on the system thermal and power performance.
More than 40 years later PI and its tools such as Pinch Analysis, Exergy Analysis, Mathematical Analysis and Hybrid Methods (any combination of the three) are still at the forefront of energy research and industrial interest, and new directions for the development of its applications continue to be found.
Process Integration methodology dates back to the 1970s and was conceived and developed as a response to the oil crisis, which had caused fuel to become expensive and scarce. The first developments were naturally in the Heat Integration (HI) field and targeted energy efficiency and energy savings.
Heat Integration methodology still provides the design foundations for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems, refrigeration, air conditioning and heating with pump systems. It is equally applicable for small, medium and large industrial sites, such as power plants and oil refineries and petrochemical complexes.
The efficient use of available heating and cooling resources for serving complex systems of various sizes and designations can significantly reduce energy consumption and emissions. This methodology can also be used to integrate renewable energy sources such as biomass, solar PV (photovoltaic) and solar thermal into the combined heating and cooling cycles.
Evolution of Process Integration
This infographic cube indicates how Process integration (Pinch Analysis) has evolved and expanded over the last 40 years. From its origin, which was meant to be focused on analysis, targeting and design of Heat Exchanger Networks (HENs) using Energy Integration all the way to applying different techniques such as mathematical analysis, exergy analysis and the combinations of these techniques (hybrid methods) in to various process industries for a variety of utilities such as water, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Environment
Operation
Hybrid Methods
Domain
Method
Subject
Total Site
Equipment
Mathematical
Process
Mass
Retrofit
HEN
Energy
Grassroot
Our Role in PI's World
We Are
A growing team of experienced process engineers, scientists, and process design specialists dedicated to offering consultancy services in all areas of the process industries. We continue to be at the forefront of process integration technology development, consultancy services and training engineers and scientists and we have achieved excellent results derived from a wide application.
We Can
help you to transform your industrial operations and achieve your business goals on performance excellence by:
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Generating savings from operational adjustments with no or minimum need for capital investment
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Identifying cost improvements
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Maximizing asset profitability
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Recovering valuable products
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Unlocking additional opportunities within your oil, gas and petrochemical plants
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Offering a pre-assessment study to determine potential savings achievable at your site
We Have
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An exclusive and state-of-the-art in house computer software (PILOT) based on Pinch Analysis Methods for targeting and design of Energy Efficient Heat Exchanger Networks.
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Access to a comprehensive software portfolio built on the best-in-class process integration and energy optimization technologies
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The ability to deliver tailored solutions to your specific needs
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Years of experience in improving energy performance accomplished by our unique and proven approaches to ensure we deliver continual energy performance improvement for you
We Offer
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Process Integration consultancy services to industries, academia and consortia
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Research and Innovative Technology Development
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Process Integration courses on request
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A to Z support to secure grants and funds provided by governmental and provincial agencies
To date, Alta Process Solutions has successfully delivered over 65 scientific and industrial project services to process industries around the globe.