Profitability, subject to the due environmental, safety and normative constraints, is the ultimate aim of any process activity. When different alternative process solutions are available, the most profitable one has to be chosen, finding the breakeven points in terms of cost or of profitability indexes. In case of preliminary feasibility analyses, performances of each process are usually assessed by means of a thermodynamic analysis, using energy and exergy .
A method to perform energy analysis, mainly when applied to natural gas processes, is the Net Equivalent Methane method: it accounts for the amount of methane required by defined reference processes to deliver thermal and mechanical energy. On the other hand, Exergy analysis can be performed according to the traditional exergy method, formalized among others by Kotas and Bejan.
Both the approaches are able to harmonize the different nature of the energy interactions involved in each process and of the different temperature level at which a thermal duty is available: thermal, mechanical and bulk flows that cross system boundaries are characterized by means of their energy or exergy equivalents, ensuring a coherent assessment of the thermodynamic efficiency for each process.
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