Heuristic framework for sustainable cooling water systems operations in oil facilities

Abstract

To meet the growing demand for cleaner environment from the society, most leading oil companies have committed to preserve environment via reduction of greenhouse gases, water and soil pollution as well as the use of natural resources. In most of the oil facilities, they required massive cooling systems to cool down process streams in order to meet the process requirements. The most common cooling system in oil facilities is evaporative cooling water system (ECWS) as such system has high efficiency. Cooling water is commonly used in offices and residential areas. However, the cooling water system is one of the utility systems that generates high environmental impacts due to high consumption of power, water and chemicals. Therefore, it is important to optimize the system in the early design stage of the project to operate in the most effective and efficient condition. In reality, many efforts may be missed out due to loose project definition, inexperience design engineer, hectic project schedule, or resource constraint. Therefore, in order to overcome the previous limitations, this paper presents a comprehensive heuristic improvement framework for cooling water systems in oil operating facilities.