Heat exchanger network synthesis: the possibility of randomization

This paper presents a new approach to heat exchanger network (HEN) design m aking extensive use of randomization techniques. It is exceedingly simple t o implement and gives new insight into the hardness and the cost landscape underlying a given problem. At the same time, the results from our algorith m may be used as good initial solutions required by most non-linear optimiz ation problem formulations of HEN design. Practical networks involve trade- off between a number of factors, all of which are difficult to incorporate in a single design methodology. Our approach is blind to any design heurist ic and generates a sufficiently large number of networks that can be furthe r evaluated to pick up the most suitable network depending on specific desi gn requirements. However, the current version of the algorithm is limited t o HEN synthesis problems that can be solved without stream splitting. We ha ve experimented with the three standard literature problems and obtained re sults that compare well with the previously published results, which justif y further research in this direction. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All ri ghts reserved.