Sustainability Analysis of a Mass- and Energy-Integrated Gas Oil Hydrocracking Process Under the SWROIM Metric

The growing demand for clean and efficient fuels, along with the need to reduce environmental impacts and operational risks, has driven the development of sustainability strategies in refining processes such as gas oil hydrocracking. This paper evaluates the sustainability of an industrial gas oil hydrocracking process with mass and energy integration, using the Safety and Sustainability Weighted Return on Investment (SWROIM) metric. This metric integrates economic, energy, environmental, technical, and safety criteria into a single quantitative indicator. The process was modeled and simulated considering heat exchange networks and direct water recycle to improve the overall system efficiency. The main objective was to calculate the SWROIM of the integrated process and analyze the relative influence of each sustainability indicator through a sensitivity study based on varying weighting factors. The results show that the process achieves an SWROIM value of 127.39%, significantly higher than the return on investment (ROI), demonstrating favorable sustainable performance. This behavior is attributed to high exergy efficiency, a reduction in potential environmental impact, improvements in water management, and a decrease in the inherent risk of the process. Sensitivity analysis confirmed that the energy indicator has the greatest influence on SWROIM, while the technical criterion has a relatively minor impact. Overall, the results demonstrate that mass and energy integration, evaluated using advanced metrics such as SWROIM, is a robust tool to support decision-making in the sustainable design and optimization of hydrocracking processes, opening opportunities for future applications in other complex systems within the refining industry.