Synthesis of heat integrated resource conservation networks with varying operating parameters

This paper presents the synthesis of heat integrated resource conservation networks (HIRCNs), covering both concentration- and property-based direct reuse/recycle systems. This newly proposed method adopts the targeting concept of the insight-based pinch approach where the minimum consumption of fresh resources and energy utilities is targeted prior to the detailed HIRCN design. Furthermore, this method is capable of handling HIRCN problems with varying operating range of process parameters (i.e., flow rates, temperatures, and properties). The proposed method is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP). As the temperature of stream is uncertain, the floating pinch concept is adopted to identify hot and cold utilities. Besides, a recently developed discretization approach is also used to solve the MINLP problem. Three literature case studies are solved to illustrate the proposed method.