Heat exchanger network design

Having explored the major degrees of freedom, the material and energy balance is now fixed, and hence the hot and cold streams which contribute to the heat exchanger network are firmly defined. The remaining task is to complete the design of the heat exchanger network. 

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Let us take each of these components in turn and explore whether they can be accounted for from the material and energy balance without having to perform heat exchanger network design. 

Heat Exchanger Network Design Based on the Optimization of a Reducible Structure... 

The approach to heat exchanger network design discussed so far is based on the creation of an irreducible structure. No redundant features were included. Of course, when the network is optimized, some of the features might be removed by the optimization. The scope for the optimization to remove features results from the assumptions made during the creation of the initial structure. However, no attempt was made to deliberately include redundant features. 

A good initialization for heat exchanger network design is to assume that no individual exchanger should have a temperature difference smaller than AT n. Having decided that no exchanger should have a temperature difference smaller than two rules were deduced in... 

Nie X-R (1998) Optimisation Strategies for Heat Exchanger Network Design Considering Pressure Drop Aspects, PhD Thesis, UMIST, UK. 

The detailed allocation of fluids to tube-side or shell-side can only be made later in the heat exchanger network design. Also, the area targeting formula does not recognize fluids to be allocated to the tube-side or shell-side. Area targeting only recognizes the individual film heat transfer coefficients. All that can be done in network area targeting... 

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