TABLE OF CONTENTS Pinch analysis is now a mature subject. It has developed from the early work on targeting and heat exchanger network design to cover a wide range of aspects of process design, particularly those related to energy usage. Many new techniques have been developed and the methodology has become more complex; nevertheless, at its core are still the fundamental insights given by energy targets and the pinch concept.
Many points have been made and conclusions drawn throughout the book, but the key findings can be summed up as follows:
Pinch analysis can be applied effectively to almost any plant, process or site, large or small.
An accurate heat and mass balance is essential.
Stream data extraction remains the most difficult task and in some situations there is no clear best choice between two or three different methods.
The energy targets, the problem table and the identification of the pinch are probably the most valuable results from the analysis.
A good approximation to the optimum ? T min can generally be obtained without using area and capital cost targeting methods: where the latter are used, only a rough estimate is often needed.
Possible process changes should always be looked for at the beginning of targeting, and can save more money than heat recovery.
Knowledge of the pinch is always useful, but there are situations where the pinch design method may not be the most appropriate way to design a heat exchanger network.
A simple user-friendly Excel spreadsheet is available to perform...
