Solar for Industrial Process Heating in Chemical Industry

The Chemical Industry includes basic chemicals and its products, petrochemicals, paints and varnishes, gases, fertilizers, and alcohol. It is one of the most diversified of all industrial sectors covering thousands of commercial products. It plays an important role in the overall development of the Indian economy. It provides chemicals to various other industries such as paper, paint, and textiles. The huge agricultural sector also depends heavily on the chemical industry through fertilizers. The chemical manufacturing process is quite complex due to the wide variety of outputs having different properties. The typical energy-intensive processes in the chemical plant are distillation, evaporation, packaging, centrifuging and drying. Heat is required in almost all forms such as low and high-pressure steam, hot water and hot air. Also, there is a large demand for refrigeration and air conditioning, for process and storage requirements of some chemicals. The solar steam generator assisted vapor absorption system is perfectly suitable for the air conditioning loads in the plant. The generic process flow diagram is not possible for the chemical industry due to the wide range of the products and different manufacturing processes required for these products. The processes that can be integrated with the solar thermal system includes Endothermic chemical reactions, Distillation, Evaporation, Drying, Water treatment, Effluent treatment, steam generation, refrigeration, and Air Conditioning.