| As a typical process-oriented industry, refinery clusters feature complex product networks and reaction processes. Their production equipment is characterized by multiple input-output and coupled interaction of material and energy flows, facing big challenges in carbon mitigation and pollution reduction. Through integration of material, energy, carbon and value flows, this study establishes construction methods for a multi-flow synergistic management system to mitigate carbon emissions and pollution from refinery clusters. By applying longitudinal tracking and horizontal benchmarking of the decoupling index, the study promotes the transition of refinery clusters from relative decoupling to absolute decoupling between energy consumption/carbon emissions/pollution and economic growth. A large-scale comprehensive refinery cluster in China is then selected to illustrate the technical path of system construction. The multi-flow synergistic management system should encompass basic functions such as data resource collection, multi-source data analysis, and management decision support, integrating and displaying multi-level data at macro, meso, and micro levels—including refinery clusters, industrial chain networks, key enterprises, and critical process units—on a unified platform. During the construction of main modules including energy flow and carbon flow, the identification of paths of material and energy metabolism within and between companies should be emphasized, such as steam supply networks and material partition supply. In addition, missing or double counting carbon emissions from energy consumption or industrial processes should be avoided when crude oil is both used as energy and raw materials. The platform’s multi-flow coordinated units are recommended to be built based on modular nesting and expandable interfaces. This supports harmonized data management across bureaus and real-time handling of heterogeneous dynamic data from various sources. |
