Identify the minimum heating and cooling utilities your process truly needs — and where a Karnot Heat Pump can simultaneously eliminate boiler fuel and reduce chiller load.
Enter your process hot and cold streams below. The tool automatically computes composite curves, the grand composite curve, minimum utility targets, and a full annual savings estimate for Karnot Heat Pump integration.
Pinch analysis (also called Process Integration or Heat Integration) is a thermodynamic method for finding the maximum possible heat recovery within an industrial process. Rather than designing heat exchangers one by one, it analyses all process streams together to find the global optimum.
Streams that need to be cooled — they supply heat to the process or environment. E.g. pasteurised milk cooling from 90°C to 4°C.
Streams that need to be heated — they absorb heat from utilities or other streams. E.g. raw milk preheating from 4°C to 65°C.
The temperature where the net heat flow is zero. Heat must never be transferred across the pinch — doing so increases both heating and cooling utility simultaneously.
A Karnot Heat Pump straddles the pinch: evaporator below (reducing chiller load), condenser above (reducing boiler load). Maximum savings with minimum electricity.
Typical mid-size dairy with pasteurization, cream processing, and evaporation.
| Stream Name | Type | Supply Temp (°C) | Target Temp (°C) | Load (kW) |
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Our team can perform a full process integration study — heat exchanger network design, pinch targeting, and Karnot Heat Pump specification — for your specific facility.
Contact Karnot EngineeringPinch analysis is a systematic thermodynamic method that identifies the minimum amount of external heating and cooling a process requires, after maximising internal heat exchange between process streams. The "pinch point" is the temperature at which heat transfer between the hot and cold composite curves is at its closest, setting a thermodynamic bottleneck. By not transferring heat across the pinch, you guarantee the absolute minimum utility consumption.
The pinch point temperature is the process temperature at which the net heat flow is zero — it divides the process into a heat sink above the pinch (requiring external heating) and a heat source below (requiring external cooling). No heat should be transferred across the pinch; doing so always increases both heating and cooling utility consumption simultaneously.
Composite curves combine all hot streams into a single enthalpy–temperature profile (the hot composite curve) and all cold streams into another (the cold composite curve). The horizontal overlap between the two curves represents the maximum heat recovery possible through heat exchangers. The gaps at the top and bottom represent the minimum heating (QH) and cooling (QC) utilities required.
A Karnot Heat Pump should straddle the pinch point — its evaporator absorbs heat from below the pinch (reducing chiller load) while its condenser delivers heat above the pinch (reducing boiler load). Placing a heat pump entirely above or entirely below the pinch only replaces one utility with electricity and does not maximise savings. The grand composite curve (GCC) is the best tool for identifying the correct temperature lift and duty for Karnot Heat Pump placement.
ΔTmin (the minimum temperature approach between hot and cold streams) is a trade-off between capital cost and energy cost. A smaller ΔTmin allows more heat recovery but requires larger, more expensive heat exchangers. Typical values are 5–10°C for liquid–liquid systems, 10–20°C for gas–liquid, and 20–30°C for gas–gas. Dairy and food processes commonly use 5–10°C.