Economic optimization design of shell-and-tube heat exchangers by a cuckoo-search-algorithm

This paper presents an optimization of shell and tube heat exchangers with respect to the total annual costs by a cuckoo search algorithm. The total annual cost is considered as the optimization objective so as to obtain economic heat exchanger structures. The performance of the CSA algorithm is further compared with various algorithm representative of the state of the art in heat exchanger optimization. The optimal results obtained by the CSA algorithm are much better than the best solutions obtained by the existed methods. Two case studies show the operating costs can be reduced by 77% and 48% compared to the results obtained from PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) and GA (Genetic Algorithm), respectively.