Optimal Design of a Compact Heat Exchanger for Heat Recovery Using Bees Algorithm

In this paper, modeling and optimization of a plate-fin heat exchanger for heat recovery in simultaneous heat and power generation systems has been studied. Design variables for the optimization of heat exchanger are hot and cold flow lengths, number of layers, pitch, lance length, thickness and fin height. Effectiveness and total annual cost of system (sum of the initial investment cost and performance) are considered as two contradict objective functions. Due to the increase of efficiency (favorite), heat and pressure loss (total annual cost) increase (unfavorable), so instead of a specific answer, it is needed to balance solutions to satisfy all of the objective functions, simultaneously. In this study, the multi-objective Bees Algorithm (MOBA) is used to improve both objective functions and the results are shown as a Pareto curve. Finally, in order to prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the results are compared with a case study from literature review that is better than the references results in some design points.