With the energy problem becoming increasingly severe

industrial energy efficiency issues need to be solved urgently. The tube and shell heat exchanger

as the most widely used device for energy recovery and utilisation

its optimal design has become a significantly important research topic. Optimal design solves the tediousness of traditional design and can easily and accurately give the desired design results. Several industrial heat duty targets and pressure drop limitations for the design of shell-and-tube heat exchangers

such as high heat transfer efficiency

large temperature correction coefficient

and high capacity

cannot be met by single-shell units and require series or parallel arrangements. This paper uses Set Trimming to optimize the design of double shell and tube heat exchangers

assuming the possibility of series

parallel

or series-parallel arrangements. Minimum heat transfer area and minimum total annualized cost are used as objective functions to optimize the design of a single or double-shell heat exchanger that better meets the objectives.