A new heat exchanger network model is presented consisting of an extension of the stage-wise superstructure approach that was proposed by Yee et al. (1990). Motivated by systems where splitting of large FCP stream is needed to match with several smaller FCP streams (like crude fractionation units), we add several matches per branch (Figure 1). Given the non-convex nature of the resulting MINLP and the associated difficulties to solve it without good initial points, we propose a new initialization strategy for generating feasible starting points. We demonstrate the successful application of our approach using examples from literature.
