“…Generally speaking, mass and/or heat integration are performed to fully utilize the available resources, being material or energy, within a plant so as to minimize or eliminate the need for external resources or waste generation, thus leading to improved plant economics [7,8]. Pinch technology is commonly used to integrate heat within a unit, e.g., distillation columns, or the whole plant, or to retrofit existing heat exchanger networks [9][10][11][12][13]. The main rules in applying pinch technology require the observation that no external cooling is performed above the pinch, whereas below the pinch, there is no external heating, and heat does not transfer across the pinch.…”