OPTIMIZATION OF HEAT-EXCHANGER NETWORKS

In the optimization of heat exchanger networks, an easy and reliable m ethod of obtaining the global optimum has been overlooked by recent re searchers. It is shown that the direct search optimization procedure u sing randomly chosen test points and region contraction as developed b y Luus and Jaakola over 20 years ago is ideally suited for these types of problems. The global optimum can be obtained an order of magnitude faster than the recently proposed method by Quesada and Grossmann.