debottlenecking of heat exchanger networks with fixed pressure drops (l.targeting)

retrofit of heat exchanger networks for energy saving and/or debottlenecking is one of important aspects of process engineering. pinch technology, as the most efficient tool for the analysis of these networks, has been applied to hundreds of such projects and shown satisfactory results. however, all the existing methods for debottlenecking, using pinch technology, are either based on assumed heat transfer coefficients or corrected ones on the bas is of revised conditions. this usually causes problems in the plant hydro dynamic system, when pressure drop constraints are present. in this paper the new area algorithm, which is based on fixed stream pressure drops and has previously been used in energy saving retrofits, is incorporated into de bottlenecking procedure and a new targeting method is introduced. the method is then applied to a crude oil distillation unit , with 20% increase in throughput, and the results are discussed.