A new graphical method to target carbon dioxide emission reductions by simultaneously aligning fuel switching,energy saving,investment cost,carbon credit,and payback time

Lowering CO₂ emissions has become one of the key drivers behind the process intensification and modification in current chemical process industries. Here, we proposed a graphical method that features simultaneous correlation between CO₂ emission reduction, fuel switching, energy saving, investment cost, carbon credit, and payback time. Such CO₂ emission reduction can be obtained by fuel switching and/or retrofitting of the heat exchanger network. We illustrate the applications of this graphical method to the crude oil preheating train that uses furnace and the palm oil refinery that uses steam boiler. In crude oil preheat train case, for example, 55% emission reduction target can be achieved at an approximately 1.15 year of payback time from the alignment of fuel switching and energy saving. Further reduction in payback time from 1.15 to 0.91 years can be obtained by adding carbon credit contribution scheme into such alignment. This illustrates the flexibility of our graphical method to provide simple and convenient way for evaluating the technical and economic variable relationship for decision‐making.