COMPARISON BETWEEN PINCH DESIGN METHODS AND COMBINATORY ESTIMATION METHODS IN THE SYNTHESIS OF HEAT-EXCHANGER NETWORKS

It is shown that pinch design methods generally cannot give exact solu tions to problems for synthesizing optimal heat exchanger networks whe n the streams in a heat exchanger network are prohibited to divide int o parts, because the reduced number of heat exchangers and the simplif ied heat exchanger network are desired. Combinatory estimation methods intrinsically consider this prohibition and can be used to obtain the exact solutions. These statements are supported by two specific examp les.