Process plant operating capacity is always a challenge for the plant operating team to maximize the utilization of the process equipment to achieve better economic revenue from the existing plant configuration. Increasing plant capacity over the rated capacity is possible within about 10% overdesign, while exceeding this limit requires capital investments to upgrade process equipment with the involved upgrade in plant infrastructure.
Mostly, hydraulic limitations on equipment sizes or piping are a common bottleneck for plant capacity and the easiest to solve. On the other hand, energy consumption limitation (e.g., Power, Fuel) is a double constrain from equipment size and resources availability. Solving energy debottlenecking problems may minimize the requirements on hydraulics upgrades on the process configurations. As an example analysis of a fired heater or compressor performances may lead to enhancement of the equipment efficiency that allows processing higher capacity with minimum modifications on the equipment.