The synthesis and analysis of heat exchanger networks are issues of great industrial interest due to the possibilities of decreasing plant costs, through the reduction of the utilities consumption and/or the number of equipments, in a grassroot design or retrofitting an existent network. The present paper explores a new design algorithm based on the Total Annual Cost (TAC) optimization for a thermal equipment, with mean tubeside and shellside flow velocities constraints, studying also the influence of pumping cost in the network’s final cost.
heat exchanger network; pressure drop optimization; heat exchanger design
