Hydrogen plant heat exchanger networks synthesis using coupled Genetic Algorithm-LP method

Abstract

Considerable research efforts have been reported in both pinch technology and Mixed-Integer-Nonlinear-Programming (MINLP) techniques for the synthesis of heat exchanger networks (HENs). In these methods, the effect of temperature and pressure on physical properties, phase change, and pressure drop in heat exchangers is not considered to produce the real industrial HENs.This paper presents a new efficient and robust method by combination of ASPEN HYSYS simulator, Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Linear Programming (LP) for calculation of HENs. Structural parameters are optimized by GA whereas continuous variables are handled using a modified LP formulation for maximum energy recovery (MER). The simulator is used for consideration of temperature and pressure effect on physical properties and phase change calculation. Results show that presented method has higher ability than previous methods in generation of actual HENs.