Abstract: There was a considerable energy saving potential in the delayed coking unit with a capacity of 1.20 Mt/a in a petrochemical plant. The heat exchanger network (HEN) of the delayed coking unit is analyzed and optimized by pinch technology. After obtaining the pinch point and energy targets, the pinch technology was applied to eliminate the heat exchange which violates the pinch rules. The optimized HEN was further optimized to cancel the problematic heat exchanger loop and raise the inlet temperature of the vacuum residue (VR) before entering the heating furnace, resulting in a final optimized HEN. Consequently, the modified HEN has achieved remarkable economic benefits by decreasing energy consumption of 11.89×104 GJ, which indicates that energy saving of this proposal can bring additional benefits of 4.577 0 million Yuan/a. The payback period of investment is 2 months with a total reconstructive investment of 0.778 2 million Yuan. The pinch technology for energy saving of delayed coking unit and the improvement of economic benefits has very important theoretical and practical significance.