Prospects for novel Pinch Analysis application domains in the 21^st century

Pinch Analysis was originally developed as a thermodynamically-based methodology for targeting and design of industrial heat recovery systems. Subsequent extensions of pinch analysis have since been developed; for example, mass pinch analysis is derived directly from analogies between heat and mass transfer, and has led to application for the efficient use of mass separating agents (MSAs) in process plants. More recent literature shows Pinch extensions for numerous applications, including energy sector planning using diverse quality measures. Other Pinch techniques have also been developed using time as the quality index, for applications such as production planning, financial analysis, supply chain management, isolated energy system design, batch process scheduling, carbon dioxide sequestration, and human resource allocation. These applications demonstrate how common problem structures allow an elegant solution approach to be developed for seemingly diverse applications. In this paper, past applications of Pinch Analysis are reviewed, and its further prospective extensions that may be developed, based on similar analogies, for non-conventional problem domains are discussed.