Pinch Analysis 2D: Composite Curves & Heat Recovery Network

Every industrial process has streams that need heating and streams that need cooling — and pinch analysis is the energy-efficiency method that figures out the minimum outside fuel and cooling water a plant actually needs once those streams trade heat with each other first. This simulator runs the real problem-table algorithm on a small four-stream process: two hot streams that must be cooled and two cold streams that must be heated, each with its own supply/target temperature and flow-capacity (CP). The top panel plots the actual hot and cold composite curves — the analytical heart of the method — while the bottom panel shows the physical heat-exchanger network: four flow pipes, a diagonal cross-exchange of recovered heat, and the hot/cold utility units that top up whatever the streams can't trade among themselves. Adjust the minimum approach temperature and one stream's flow rate to watch the pinch temperature and the minimum hot/cold utility targets recompute live, and toggle heat integration on and off to see exactly how much energy cross-exchanging the streams recovers compared to heating and cooling every stream from scratch.