A four-stream pinch analysis case study — a worked problem table, minimum hot and cold utility targets, the pinch temperature that splits the problem in two, and a stream-split network hitting the theoretical minimum number of units.
The project brief: recover as much heat as possible between two hot process streams and two cold process streams before falling back on purchased steam and cooling water, with a 10°C minimum approach temperature. Framed as this program's baseline heat-integration project, it walks the full pinch design sequence a process engineer would actually run — the shifted-temperature problem table, minimum utility targets, the pinch point that forbids cross-pinch heat transfer, and a network design built from feasibility-checked matches.
This module works every number from that same four-stream data set: the problem table cascade that locates the pinch and the minimum hot/cold utility duties, why the pinch splits the network into two independent feasibility problems, and the stream splits on two of the four streams that make an otherwise CP-infeasible match buildable — arriving at a seven-unit network that matches the theoretical minimum on both sides of the pinch. The full worked numbers, complete bill of materials, and finished design reasoning are part of the unlocked module below.