Abstract: Absrtact: A penalty incentive bi-directional optimization collaborative control mechanism is proposed to optimize the heat exchanger network. Firstly, the block penalty is applied to the large heat exchange unit in the structure, which can delay the growth rate of the large heat exchange unit and promote the succession of the dominant heat exchange unit in the structure at the later stage of optimization; At the same time, in order to enhance the competitiveness of the new unit, the evolutionary penalty is imposed on the existing heat exchange unit on the cold stream or hot stream, which is used to promote the development of the new unit and realize the renewal of the dominant heat exchange unit on the stream. Subsequently, it is applied to the optimization of three typical heat exchanger networks. The results show that this method can effectively avoid the local optimization and obtain a better heat exchanger network structure, which proves its effectiveness in improving the global search ability of the heuristic algorithm.