SUPER TARGETING OF MASS EXCHANGE NETWORK

Abstract

The mass exchange network (MEN) is a network of mass exchangers with a purpose of preferentially transferring certain species from a set of rich streams to a set of lean steams, Mass exchange operations are widely used in chemical process industries, such as food preparation, product separation and product finishing etc., The mass exchange network problems are tackled by a number of approaches like Supertargeting approach, mixed integer linear/nonlinear programming approach, State-Space approach, process graph theory approach and Genetic algorithm approach. In present work Supertargeting approach, based on the Pinch Technology, is applied to design optimal MENs. The present study is related to the targeting and design of optimal MENs. The problems are tackled in two steps. During the first step a feasible target is formed by integrating streams and utilities based on thermodynamic principles and heuristic rules. In the second step a network is designed to satisfy the targeted parameters and finally mass exchange network (MEN) is fine-tuned to get an optimal network. Mass exchange is occurred when certain species are transferred from a set of rich streams to a set of lean streams in given mass exchanger such as absorber, adsorber, solvent extractor etc. When this process of mass exchange takes place in more than one placed in an integrated form then mass exchange network is formed. The present study is related to the targeting and design of optimal mass exchange networks.