Abstract:
A theory framework is presented for flexible heat exchanger network (HEN) synthesis considering the scheduling of cleaning maintenance at initial design stage. By means of simultaneous optimization of flexible HEN synthesis and cleaning schedule, the total annual cost of the heat exchanger network can be further reduced, and the network flexibility is improved at the same time. In order to reduce computational complexity for this problem classified as NPhard problem, a twostage approach involving preliminary synthesis stage and simultaneous optimization stage is introduced. In the last section, the efficiency of the proposed approach in this paper is validated by a numerical example.