Introduction to Pinch Technology

The demand for effective usage of energy processes is increasing and nowadays every process engineer is facing the challenge to seek answers to the questions related to their process energy patterns. Below the questions that frequently may be asked are listed: Is the existing process as energy efficient as it should be? How can new projects be evaluated with respect to their energy requirements? What changes can be made to increase the energy efficiency without incurring any cost? What investments can be made to improve energy efficiency? What is the most appropriate utility mix for the process? How to put energy efficiency and other targets like reducing emissions, increasing plant capacities, improve product qualities etc, into a one coherent strategic plan for the overall site? All these questions and more can be answered with a full understanding of Pinch Technology and an awareness of the available tools for applying it in a practical way.

The aim here is to provide the basic knowledge of pinch technology concept and how it can be applied across a wide range of process industries. The pinch technology was proposed firstly for optimization of heat exchangers and therefore it is introduced / described below for such devises. Heat exchange equipments encounter in many industries for at least two reasons; a) it is often necessary as part of the process to change the thermal condition and b) it is the ambition to minimize the energy consumption of the given process.

With other words the idea is to maximize the energy recovery within the process or to minimize the use of external energy sources.