PILOT™
PILOT™ is a set of robust tools for the application of Pinch Analysis.
Applicable to all grassroots, retrofit, and de-bottlenecking projects
Used for a wide range of project goals
User friendly with an intuitive user interface
Used for targeting and design of energy, capital and pressure drop optimization
Purpose
Heat Exchanger Network is the most important part in a process, when considering energy conservation and/or environmental protection. Refineries and Petrochemical industries are considered to be amongst energy intensive and environmental pollutant industries.
Computer software (PILOT™) is introduced based on Pinch Analysis Methods for targeting and design of Energy Efficient Heat Exchanger Networks. Using this toolbox, Energy Consumption, Area Requirement, Number of Heat Transfer Units and Stream Pressure Drops can be optimally estimated ahead of design.
Also, included are various design tools to achieve targets during design procedure. A sound basis for economic analysis in targeting stage supports the built-in technology for both Grass roots and Retrofit designs.
What Makes PILOT™ Unique?
Pressure
Drop Optimization
The main feature in this software, which is unique compare to other Pinch Analysis Software, is the pressure drop considerations, including:
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Pumps and compressor optimization in Grass roots designs,
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Pumps and compressor replacement study in Retrofitting,
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Heat exchanger detailed design, using full pressure drop on both sides,
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Full Optimization of Heat Exchanger Networks Designed with PDM.
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Full consistency between the results of Heat Exchanger detailed design and network synthesis
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PILOT™ is a unique software with some targeting aces. A heat exchanger network, which has been targeted as a new design, or an existing heat exchanger network which must be improved for more energy saving, consists of so many hot and cold streams in shell and/or tube routs.
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Other software recently used for Pinch Analysis purposes, applies an assumed service heat transfer coefficient for any streams, but PILOT™ has a set of robust tools, which are able to apply allowable stream pressure drop as a more sensible parameter for targeting purposes. Stream fluid velocities can be also set as heat transfer coefficient representative.
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These abilities allow the user to optimize all of the stream pressure drops. In other words, pumps and/or compressors can be optimized and replaced in new design or retrofit cases.
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Various pressure drop optimization options are predicted in PILOT™ as:
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Pressure drops optimization for total cost minimization.
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Pressure drops optimization for payback minimization.
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Pressure drops optimization for investment minimization.
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Pressure drops optimization for generalized investment minimization regarding de-bottlenecking studies.
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Point Targeting, Range Targeting, and Super-targeting are elaborated in PILOT™ together with a complete module for heat exchanger design and rating by full pressure drop utilization in both sides of exchangers. In this field, PILOT™ is actually unique, because, there aren’t any comparative software with having such a capability to consider realistic pressure drop consideration in targeting/synthesis/detailed design steps with reliable consistency and without any iterative trials.
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Physical properties and stream phase can be set in PILOT™ so that physical properties can be changed as a function of temperature during heat exchanger network calculations.
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Exergy Composite Curves and Exergy Grand Composite Curves can also originated by PILOT™ for various shaft work targeting projects such as power plants, and low temperature processes (Cryogenics) new design or revamping.
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Heat Exchanger Network Analyzer facilities have been built in PILOT™ 2.12 for enabling the user to perform complicated calculations of a Heat Exchanger Network during Detailed Design step.
Features & Highlights
PILOT™ has been used for a vast range of industrial and scientific projects and found to give excellent and reliable results.
A typical value of 15-50% energy saving has found in most cases with a payback period of 1-3 years.
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The user friendly interface and professional spreadsheets for input data allows for rapid and goal orientated application of the pinch analysis method - even for complex processes.
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An advanced on-line help system has been coupled with PILOT™ to provide so many guidelines during the user communication. All of the PILOT™ parts have been illustrated in this help module with a full graphical inclination. WhatIsThisHelp properties have also been predicted in some of the forms to maximize help accessing speed. This option is very useful from fast help loading point of view.
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PILOT™ consists of a set of modules, which can work separately. A leader module is considered for the interaction of these modules, which is able to read or generate input or output codes. This means that, at any times, unusable modules can unload from memory to increase computation speed and providing more error trapping.
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An advanced error trapping has been joined, so that, all of the input/output and intermediate data will be checked to prevent incorrect output results.
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Multi-project handling facilities have been anticipated for PILOT™ main module. This ability provides very high quality performance for the projects, which are loaded simultaneously. Occasionally, a user can change active project and can switch from a project to the others. Maximum available number of projects that can be opened concurrently is 10.
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Graphical capabilities are taken into account in PILOT™, so that, so many graphs such as Composite Curves, Grand Composite Curves, Driving Force Plot, ... can be plotted due to the type of project. Generated graphs are very sufficient and obvious to use.
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Auxiliary information and short-cut indicators allows the user to establish system/keyboard, as well as, project status at once.
User Interface