Finding the Pinch — Targeting Minimum Utilities6 / 17
Reading the Pinch: Composite Curves & Overlap
Interpreting the graphical picture — where the curves come closest, and why that point sets the whole process's minimum energy target.
9 min read · Jacob Willis, Net Zero Lead · Last reviewed July 2026
The two-stream cascade in the last lesson is small enough to trace by hand. Run the exact same algorithm on the four-stream process from the composite curves lesson, and you get a result for a genuinely more realistic problem: this lesson gives you that answer, and shows how it connects back to the composite-curve picture.
In this lesson
- 01The result, for the four-stream process
- 02Checking it against the overall balance
- 03Connecting the number back to the picture
- 04What "above" and "below" the pinch mean
- 05Sources and further reading