For a given system, the synthesis of HENs entails answering several questions:
• Which heating/cooling utilities should be employed ?
• What is the optimal heat load to be removed/added by each utility?
• How should the hot and cold streams be matched (i.e., stream pairings)?
• What is the optimal system configuration (e.g., how should the heat exchangers be arranged?
Is there any stream splitting and mixing ?) ?