Synthesis of heat exchanger networks: I. Systematic generation of energy optimal networks

TLDR

The paper presents a thermodynamically oriented method for synthesizing heat exchanger networks, focusing on preliminary network design. The method solves the synthesis in two stages: first generating preliminary networks that maximize heat recovery, then evolving the most satisfactory final networks from those preliminaries. The approach is demonstrated on two four‑stream examples.

Abstract

Abstract A thermodynamically orientated method is presented for the synthesis of heat exchanger networks. With this method, the problem is solved in two stages. In the first stage, preliminary networks are generated which give maximum heat recovery. In the second stage, the most satisfactory final networks are evolved using the preliminary networks as starting points. In this paper, emphasis is given to the synthesis of the preliminary networks. Two four‐stream examples are solved. In Part II, emphasis will be given to the synthesis of final networks.