Rules for Predicting Benefits in Simultaneous versus Sequential Heat Integration

Abstract Applying simultaneous process optimization and heat integration (SIM) on a process can lead to an increased Net Present Value (NPV) compared to applying a sequential approach (SEQ) to the same process. These benefits do not always arise, but the computational effort is significantly higher. In this paper, three heuristic rules are proposed that predict whether applying SIM will improve a specific process over applying SEQ. These rules are to be applied once the results of SEQ are available and can be used to decide if SIM should be applied or not. The proposed rules are subsequently verified with two test cases.