Simultaneously Designing and Targeting for Networks with Multiple Resources of Different Qualities

This paper presents a new design procedure for the networks with multiple resources, such as hydrogen and water, of different qualities. The minimum consumption targets of the resources and pinch-causing sources can be identified as well during design. The objective of this work is to reduce the consumption of the resources with higher quality due to their higher cost. A few examples are investigated to show the proposed method. For a network of single resource with single contaminant, there is often only one pinch point for the resource. On the other hand, for a network of multiple resources with single contaminant, there might be a few different pinch points. Each resource might have its own pinch point, if its amount is sufficient. The contaminant concentration of the pinch-causing source for a resource with lower concentration will be below that of the higher-concentration resource(s).