Optimization of chlorination cooling systems in glove manufacturing industry for maximum energy recovery

Abstract

The Chlorination process in a glove manufacturing industry aid as a surface treatment on the latex surface by improving the surface frictions allowing the donning of the glove. A cooling system in chlorination process functions to replace and displace the heat from hot chlorine water and thus lowering the temperature by returning the colder water back to the chlorine water tank. Current chlorination cooling system used in Top Glove factories proven inefficient to achieve the desired chlorine water temperature in the chlorination process due to several factors such as high utility rate and energy consumption, cooling tower design and production processes. Energy losses are one of the major concerns especially in process where equipment and heat integration system design are outdated. In this paper, the optimization of the current chlorination cooling system in glove manufacturing industry was assessed by two methods; the heat integration analysis and direct integration of lithium bromide heat pump. Although there are not many applications of heat pump scenarios in engineering practices, studies have shown that heat pumps are effective in improving low-quality heat energy in energy conversion systems. The main goal is to determine the savings that can be generated through retrofitting the current design of the overall system as well as identifying the optimum cooling system suitable to be implemented in chlorination process in glove manufacturing industry based on thorough economic analysis. The energy saving and the cost savings obtained from both methods are evaluated and compared to determine the feasibility of its implementation to the existing system, which results at 99.59% for the retrofit of the existing system and 35% for the direct approach design. However, for combined design for the grassroot design was up to 135 % in terms of cost saving for the both utilities and chemical savings.