Energy saving analysis and management modeling based on index decomposition analysis integrated energy saving potential method: Application to complex chemical processes

Highlights: • The integrated framework that combines IDA with energy-saving potential method is proposed. • Energy saving analysis and management framework of complex chemical processes is obtained. • This proposed method is efficient in energy optimization and carbon emissions of complex chemical processes. - Abstract: Energy saving and management of complex chemical processes play a crucial role in the sustainable development procedure. In order to analyze the effect of the technology, management level, and production structure having on energy efficiency and energy saving potential, this paper proposed a novel integrated framework that combines index decomposition analysis (IDA) with energy saving potential method. The IDA method can obtain the level of energy activity, energy hierarchy and energy intensity effectively based on data-drive to reflect the impact of energy usage. The energy saving potential method can verify the correctness of the improvement direction proposed by the IDA method. Meanwhile, energy efficiency improvement, energy consumption reduction and energy savings can be visually discovered by the proposed framework. The demonstration analysis of ethylene production has verified the practicality of the proposed method. Moreover, we can obtain the corresponding improvement for the ethylene production based on the demonstration analysis. The energy efficiency index and the energy saving potential of these worst months can be increased by 6.7% and 7.4%, respectively. And the carbon emissions can be reduced by 7.4–8.2%.