(185ah) Heat Integration and Controllability Analysis of Heat Exchanger Networks

Teaching Interests: Process Dynamics and Control

The objective of this research is to present a methodological framework for designing heat exchanger networks (HENs), which best addresses heat recovery, economics and controllability. The proposed framework formulates a systematic approach consisting of a series of simple design steps. The steps include heat integration techniques such that the design can achieve its energy recovery targets: a detailed cost analysis to minimize both capital and utility costs of the design, and steady-state controllability measures to keep the design controllable. A heat exchanger network case study was used to test the proposed framework, and the results were compared with previous works in the literature. Pinch and Superstructure heat integration methods were applied to the case study; both designs achieved the required heat recovery of the system, however, the Superstructure design showed lower costs than the Pinch design. Both heat integration methods were also compared in terms of their inner loop interactions by performing Relative Gain Array (RGA) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) analyses.