Synthesis of Heat-Integrated Water Networks Using a Modified Heat Exchanger Network Superstructure

This work presents the synthesis of heat-integrated water networks (HIWNs) by using mathematical programming. A new superstructure is synthesised by combining a water network and a modified heat exchanger network. Based on the proposed superstructure, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is developed. The model is solved by using a one-step solution strategy enabling different initialisations and the generation of multiple solutions, from which the best one is chosen. The results show that the proposed model can be effectively used for solving HIWN problems of different complexities, including large-scale problems.