Pinch Analysis: Principles, Methodologies, And Industrial Applications for Process Integration, Energy Efficiency, Resource Conservation, And Sustainable Chemical Process Optimization

Manufacturing process optimization involves two main steps. First, establishing the proper process structure or topology is essential. The second step is to optimize the key process parameters mathematically. For qualitative decisions, like choosing the topology of a chemical process, traditional mathematical methods are often inadequate. Only small academic problems have benefited from parametric optimization using 'superstructure' approaches, which are not suitable for large-scale practical issues. Over the past 25 years, heuristic optimization methods known as