BREWERY HEAT EXCHANGER NETWORKS DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION BASED ON PINCH ANALYSIS AT A SINGLE ΔTMIN

Abstract

Pinch analysis was applied to design and optimize at a single ∆Tmin of 10 oC, a heat exchanger network for maximum energy recovery to reduce the energy consumption of a brewery. At ∆Tmin of 10 oC, the minimum heating and cooling requirements of the brewery were 5,185 kW and 3,039 kW, respectively. Above pinch, 120 possible design configurations were identified but only 8 are feasible. Below pinch, only 7 design configurations are feasible out of 52 possible. The optimum heat exchanger network obtained for the brewery is 1 process-to-process heat exchanger and 8 process-to-utility heat exchangers as a consequence of combining the configurations of the least cost feasible designs for both above and below pinch. The optimum heat exchanger network corresponds to a maximum of 22% heat recovery potential which accounts to 4.5% less than the existing operating cost equivalent to $432,133 per year at total annualized cost. Other values of ∆Tmin are recommended to be considered for future studies.

Keywords: brewery heat exchanger design, pinch analysis, heat exchanger optimization