R. Lakshmanan et R. Banaresalcantara, A NOVEL VISUALIZATION TOOL FOR HEAT-EXCHANGER NETWORK RETROFIT, Industrial & engineering chemistry research, 35(12), 1996, pp. 4507-4522
Research into heat exchanger network (HEN) retrofit has focused on eit
her complete automation or evolutionary, thermodynamic approaches. The
former involves the solution of mixed-integer, nonlinear programs, wi
th the advantage of rigor, but suffering from exorbitant computational
overheads. On the other hand, existing thermodynamic approaches, thou
gh useful in greenfield design, are inadequate for retrofit problems.
Using a visualization tool that makes graphically explicit both the lo
ads and the driving forces in a heat exchanger network-providing a suc
cinct, graphical description of the first and second laws of thermodyn
amics applied to the system - we present design guidelines which facil
itate rapid evolution of good retrofit solutions by inspection. The me
thod is elucidated using case studies, the retrofits proposed are comp
arable or superior to existing solutions and are more rapidly obtained
, and the rationale behind the proposed modifications is easily docume
nted. This final feature greatly enhances the industrial acceptability
of the approach.