SYNTHESIS OF HEAT EXCHANGER NETWORKS WITH DESIGNER IMPOSED CONSTRAINTS

A new sequential, evolutionary design method is proposed for the synthesis of heat exchanger networks with designer-imposed constraints. The design parameters for generating the network are obtained with conventional algorithms by solving a modified trans-shipment formulation of the transportation linear program. Candidate network topologies can then be easily configured by hand computation and the “best” designs are quickly identified even for large problems. The procedure also identifies problems which may have multiple feasible near optimum topolgoies, characterized by minimum energy consumption as well as minimum number of units.