Effect of Technology on Our Lives
In the late 1970s, Pinch Technology was developed as a thermodynamic approach to energy conservation in industries. The basic tool was called the “Composite Curve” plot, which represented graphically the heat available and heat required by a process flowsheet. These curves also allowed a designer to set realistic targets for the minimum heating and cooling utilities required, and identify the existence of the “pinch point” which constrains further heat recovery.
In 1855 the Kinematascope, a stereo animation camera, was invented. It was able to create 3d motion pictures. In 1915 the first anaglyph movie was produced. Anaglyph technology used 3d glasses with 2 different color lenses that would direct an image to each eye. In 1890 William Friese-Greene, a British film pioneer, filed a patent for the 3D movie process. In 1922 the first public 3D movie, “The Power of Love”, was displayed. In 1935 the first 3D Color movie was produced. The use of the technology would remain dormant for over a decade.
In the late 1980s, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles applied pinch concepts to mass transfer, sparking off an entirely new area of research. Instead of plotting Composite Curves of temperature and energy, the new approach plotted composition versus mass load. This pioneering work into mass exchange networks was followed by researchers at the University of Manchester, who applied it to water and waste water minimisation.
In the 1960s a new technology called Space-Vision 3D was released. This technology took two images and printed them over each other on a single strip. Unlike previous 3D technologies, it required a single projector with a special lens. This new technology removed the need to use two cameras to display 3D movies. Two camera systems were difficult to use, because it required that the two cameras were perfectly synced. The first movie to use this technology was “The Bubble”. The movie was panned by critics, but the 3D experience still brought huge audiences. It became a profitable movie, making the new technology ready for promotion to other studios.
Hydrogen Pinch Technology was a more recent application which addressed the problems faced by oil refiners around the start of the 21st century. Until then, hydrogen availability was not a major issue for most refineries. However, this began to change when stricter legislation on sulfur content in fuels led to an increased demand for hydrotreating.
At the same time, newer aromatics limits meant that catalytic reforming, traditionally a major source of hydrogen, was being constrained. The net result was that the existing hydrogen production capacity often became a bottleneck.
The Pinch Technology approach constructs hydrogen Composite Curves, showing the demands and sources of on-site hydrogen in terms of stream purities and flow rates. This diagram allows the engineer to find the “hydrogen pinch” and to set targets for hydrogen recovery, hydrogen plant production and import requirements. Hydrogen savings experienced are typically hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars per year. Alternatively, the hydrogen freed up has been used to increase partial pressures in certain reactors and enhance their conversion, yield, and selectivity, while increasing catalyst life.
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