هادی سلطانی

In this paper, a simple method is presented for the synthesis and retrofit of heat exchanger networks (HENs) by considering pressure drop as well as finding proper path of streams inside heat exchangers (HEs) to reduce the pumping cost of network. Generally, HEN problems lead to MINLP models which have convergence difficulties due to the existence of both continuous and integer variables. In this study, instead of solving these variables simultaneously, a combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) with Quasi Linear Programming (QLP) and Integer Linear Programming (ILP) was used for solving the problem. GA was used to find optimal HENs structure and streams paths, whereas continuous variables were solved by QLP. For the retrofit of HENs, a modified ILP model was used. Results show that the proposed method has the ability to reduce the cost of annual pumping due to considering optimal paths for streams in the HEs compared to the literature.