Simultaneous synthesis of heat exchanger network with the non-isothermal mixing

Abstract

Optimization of heat exchanger network is attributed to improving the process industrial energy utilization ratio. Energy consumption reduction plays an important role in the low-carbon economic development. Several synthesis approaches for heat exchanger network have been proposed and extended during the last three decades. With the evolution of the computer technology, the simultaneous synthesis method via mathematic programming attracts a great deal of attention worldwide. However, some difficulties still need to be overcome, for instance, model simplification and computational complexity. In this work, the simultaneous stage-wise synthesis model without the assumption of isothermal mixing is presented and implemented using effective initialization strategies and a novel two-level algorithm. Three case studies illustrated the better performance of the initialization strategies and two-level algorithm for heat exchanger network synthesis problems, considering non-isothermal mixing.