*5.7. Non-Energy Benefits*

Other than operability considerations and practical implementation issues, non-energy benefits were stated as important for several of the retrofit proposals during the interviews. Many of the non-energy benefits discussed were not considered in the original design of the retrofit proposals, but pointed out by the refinery experts during the interviews. Examples of non-energy benefits that were discussed are de-bottlenecking, reduced load on overloaded air coolers and improved product quality. If the retrofit proposal included a non-energy benefit, the interviewees claimed that this increased the incentive to implement the measure by simultaneously providing an opportunity to increase production or solve an operational issue. This was very clear during both the interviews and

the validation seminar. Additionally, the retrofit proposals that included non-energy benefits were ranked higher in the interviews. For example, the process engineer in interview number 6 stated that

*"If you only consider fuel savings, if we would implement this to save those 8 MW, I would give the retrofit score two. But if you consider that we could achieve a bigger revamp and also consider the e*ff*ects on the tower it would be a three."*

*Process Engineer, Unit D*

Regarding retrofit proposal 6 (see Appendix A). In the validation seminar, it was confirmed that non-energy benefits are important to consider alongside energy efficiency measures and the refinery experts stated that non-energy benefits have been a major decisive factor for previously implemented energy saving projects. Energy projects without other process gains have usually been discarded when planning refinery turn-arounds.
