Pinch Point - Heat Transfer

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Pinch Point – Heat transfer

Heat Exchanger
The pinch point is the location in the heat exchanger where the temperature difference between
hot and cold fluid is minimum at that location. Generally, pinch points occur at either of the ends
of the heat exchanger, if pure fluids with no phase change are going through the heat exchanger.
The point of closest approach between the hot and cold composite curves is the pinch. This is
where the design is most constrained and large heat exchangers are required. Hence, by finding
this point and starting the design there, the energy targets can be achieved at an optimal cost.
Minimum approach temperature
The minimum approach temperature represents the smallest gap in temperature across which
heat transfer will occur in the system. This often only occurs at the pinch. While technically any
value greater than zero can allow for heat transfer, very small values are not often feasible. Low-
temperature differences decrease the need for additional utilities, but require increasingly large
heat transfer areas, meaning larger heat exchangers. The trade-off between operating costs and
capital costs should be used to choose the minimum approach temperature for the network.
Typical choices for minimum approach temperatures are between 5 °C and 30 °C.

Pinch analysis
Pinch analysis is a methodology for minimizing energy consumption of chemical processes by
calculating thermodynamically feasible energy targets (or minimum energy consumption) and
achieving them by optimizing heat recovery systems, energy supply methods, and process
operating conditions.
Traditionally, process streams are specified with the use of initial and final temperatures and its
mean heat capacity flow rate, defined by the equation: Cp = ∆H/∆T.
Heat capacity flowrate values are taken from material and energy balances and are assumed as
constants. In the case of phase changes in multicomponent mixtures, this assumption is not
reasonable, and the temperature range in which the stream heat capacity is assumed constant
must be shortened. The definition of the number of temperatures intervals used to describe the
thermal behavior of the stream relies exclusively on the engineer experience and there is no
established criteria for the optimum number of splits. In pinch analysis, the pinch occurs where
the heat transferred is zero, the analysis tells you at what interval pinch occurs between the hot
stream and the cold stream.
Nowadays, process simulators are available to almost every engineer and so, manual procedures,
based exclusively on intuition or experience, are no longer required.
The waste heat recovery process

Exhaust gases of gas turbine generators contain a significant amount of thermal energy which can
be recovered externally or internally to the cycle itself. The most effective technology option for
external heat recovery is the combined gas-steam power plant. The internal recovery conventional
solutions are based on thermodynamic regeneration. The image illustrates the pinch point
between the exit of saturated steam from economizer and entry of turbine hot gas into
economizer. This is the point where the design of the heat recovery system gets constrained from
the point of the design.
Distillation column

The intersection of an operating line and the equilibrium curve is called a pinch point. A simple
column will have two pinch points (because there are two operating lines). The points change
when the operating lines do. An existing column can "pinch" if its operating line is too close to its
equilibrium curve. This means that there are several stages doing very little separation and
wasting resources. This corresponds to an infinite number of stages in the column on each side of
the pinch. You can see above how pinch is shifting to right as reflux ratio is reducing and
rectification line is going towards equilibrium curve.

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