Note also that in order to satisfy the pinch decomposition and the stream matching rules we ended up intro- ducing a large number of stream splits. This is quite common in heat-exchanger network design. None of the three split fractions was optimized, so substantial savings as well as simplification of the network could be pos- sible. For example, loops exist between the branches of stream 3 and stream 1 and between the branches of stream 3 and stream 2. With the current split ratios these loops cannot be eliminated, but with other ratios it might be possible to eliminate one or two exchangers.