Literature Survey – Heat Exchanger Network and Mass Transfer Equipment Network

3.1.0 Introduction: Heat exchanger network synthesis (HENS) is an important field in thermal engineering and has been the subject of a considerable amount of research over the past 50 years. Its significance can be attributed to its role in controlling the costs of energy for a process. The heat-exchanger network (HEN) design problem was introduced into the literature by Ten Broeck in 1944. The first work in grassroots HENS was presented by Hwa in 1965. Then the HENS problem was first rigorously defined by Masso and Rudd in 1969. The basic HENS problem is the following: Given (i) a set H of hot process streams to be cooled from the inlet temperatures to the outlet temperatures, (ii) a set C of cold process streams to be heated from the inlet temperatures to the outlet temperatures, (iii) the heat capacities and flow rates of the hot and cold process streams, (iv) the utilities available and the temperatures or temperature ranges and the costs for these utilities, (v) heat-exchanger cost data, develop a network of heat exchangers with minimum arinualized investment and operating costs. For an introduction to the fundamental principles and procedures of HENS, readers are referred to the texts of Shenoy, Smith, Seider et al., and Biegler et al. The thorough reviews on the topic of HENS were contributed by Gundersen and Naess, by Jezowski and by Grossmon et al.. The purpose of this additional review work is to provide coverage of work not covered by previous review papers, to provide a critical review of the current state-of-the-art in HENS and become the impetus for future research. Creating an exhaustive compilation and organization of HENS papers as such is a complicated task. The major solution methods in HENS have been reviewed initially followed by an annotated bibliography of HENS literature of the 20th century. Further, several classification schemes of the annotated HENS works are proposed and discussed. Concluding remarks are presented at the end.