Abstract: An example is the newly built 1.5 Mt/a p-xylene aromatic unit, which uses adsorption simulate moving bed technology, and its utilities rely on the existing facilities of enterprise. The receiving capacity of original flare system is only 500 t/h, which can not meet the demand in case of general power failure（GPF）happened. HIPS was applied to xylene column, extract column and reformate splitter column, and the pinch point design was optimized to reduce the flare emission. The results showed that the application of HIPS and pinch technology could reduce the torch emission from 3 790 t/h to 438 t/h, which met the requirements of the whole plant GPF accident.

Key words: adsorption aromatics complex, general power failure, flare release, HIPS, pinched approach, optimization, implementation