State-of-the-Art Review of Pinch Analysis Techniques for Water Network Synthesis

Water network synthesis has been all active area of research for the past one and it half decades. Many think that the technology reached a mature stage in the late 1990s, especially for the insight-based technique based on pinch analysis. The only review for the field dates back to 2000. However, many new papers published in this century reveal that new research gaps are found and more works were carried out to address the limitations of the "old" techniques. The main objective of this review is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of the insight-based techniques developed in the 21st century, particularly those developed for single impurity network of the fixed flow rate problems. Comparisons were also made between these recent techniques and those developed for the fixed load problems in the past Century. Various How rate targeting techniques developed for water reuse/recycle, regeneration, and wastewater treatment are reviewed in detail, along with the network design techniques that achieve the established targets. Finally, future research directions are Outlined at the end of the review.