Zonal and Total Site Workflows

OpenPinch becomes substantially more powerful once you move beyond a single process-zone view and start using explicit zone hierarchies.

Question This Guide Answers

How do I use OpenPinch for nested process areas and higher-level utility integration studies?

Why Zones Matter

Zones control analysis scope.

At small scale, a zone may represent:

  • a unit operation

  • a process area

At larger scale, zones can be aggregated into:

  • a plant

  • a site

Direct integration usually answers the local question. Indirect integration usually answers the higher-level utility system question.

Practical Workflow

  1. define a zone hierarchy explicitly when the study is multiscale

  2. solve the local or process-zone picture

  3. compare it to the aggregated Total Process or Total Site picture

  4. use higher-level graph views to understand what changed

Useful Assets

Packaged sample:

Load zonal_site.json directly by name from Python, or copy it through OpenPinch.resources when you need a local editable file.

Packaged notebook:

openpinch notebook --name 02_total_site_targets_and_sugcc.ipynb -o notebooks

Python Pattern

from OpenPinch import PinchWorkspace

workspace = PinchWorkspace(source="pulp_mill.json", project_name="Site")
baseline = workspace.case("baseline")
summary = baseline.summary_frame()
total_site = baseline.target.indirect_heat_integration()
selected_state_total_site = baseline.target.indirect_heat_integration(
    state_id="peak",
)

What To Compare

When comparing local and aggregated answers:

  • compare hot utility targets

  • compare cold utility targets

  • compare graph types at the same scope

  • confirm that target row names refer to the zone and target family you think they do

Useful Graphs

For multiscale workflows, the most useful views are often:

  • grand composite curves

  • Total Site profiles

  • site utility grand composite curves

Next Steps