“…The synthesis of heat exchanger network (HEN) is a well‐known research topic in Process Systems Engineering. Numerous design technologies and methods have been developed with extensive application to industrial practice, as stated in review articles 1,2 and research publications, 3,4 to name a few. Of all the previous works on HEN synthesis, the approach that gains dominance is the one where a superstructure is proposed together with the formulation of a mixed‐integer nonlinear model (MINLM), which can be solved using mixed‐integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) procedures, 5,6 many times using decompositions, 7,8 or stochastic‐based methods (metaheuristics‐based methods), such as genetic algorithms, 9,10 simulated algorithms, 11,12 particle swarm optimization, 13,14 hybridization between different algorithms, 15,16 etc.…”