Abstract
The synthesis of heat exchanger networks (HENs) has mainly been done through the use of approximate models for each of the individual heat exchangers that comprises the network. These approximate models do not adequately take into account key parameters such as the overall heat transfer co-efficient, TEMA standards, pressure drops, FT correction factors, and multiple shells. These factors can significantly alter the cost of the network. This paper presents a new methodology for the synthesis of heat exchanger networks using detailed heat exchanger design models that takes into account the aforementioned design parameters. The newly developed method involves the following steps. First, a SYNHEAT (Yee and Grossmann, 1990) MINLP model is solved. The individual exchangers for the resulting network are then designed using heuristics, TEMA standards and the Bell-Delaware method. From the designs obtained for these individual exchangers, correction factors are inserted into the SYNHEAT model that account for changes in overall heat transfer coefficient, TEMA choices, pressure drops, Ft correction factors and the effect of multiple shell passes. The SYNEAT model is then re-run and individual exchangers re-designed and the procedure repeated until convergence is achieved. For each iteration the change in each correction factor is limited to avoid the omission of certain solutions. While the methodology cannot guarantee global optimality it can ensure that the synthesised processes are physically achievable and has also been shown to converge on physically meaningful parameters without the explicit formulation of complicated non-linear equations in the MINLP formulation.
