Empowering Energy Efficiency: A Comprehensive Review of Industrial Process Simulation Software for Optimal Energy Integration

Energy integration of processes has become necessary to optimize industrial sites in terms of investment and operating costs, energy consumption, flexibility, and gas emissions. The large number of variables and data to be processed, analyzed, and simulated, the limitation in time, and the complexity and variety of the processes (continuous, batch, etc.) make manual manipulation and calculation very difficult. Hence, there is a need to use digital help and support tools for modeling and resolution. Several software programs have been developed for this purpose, each with specifications and limitations, mainly based on pinch analysis. Other software programs also use exergetic analysis or specific algorithms for solving optimization problems. One of the difficulties that may face researchers when choosing software is that no one addresses all the issues related to energy integration problems. Each software focuses on specific objectives and has some properties different from the others; hence, it appears necessary to choose the appropriate software for each given problem. In this article, we present a detailed review of various industrial process simulation software used for the optimization of energy recovery and the design of heat exchanger networks using energy integration as a solution, and the options these software provide, to help researchers choose software that is well-suited to the case study based on the options it offers.