Integrated Flexibility and Controllability Analysis in Design of Chemical Processes

Abstract

A systematic approach for the synthesis of flexible and controllable plants is presented. It provides a new quantitative measure of the flexibility and controllability of a design and allows the designer to systematically evaluate different process structures and/or control systems. An integrated approach based on the dynamic mixed-integer nonlinear-programming problem is introduced that consists of two stages in each iteration of the algorithm. In this way, the effect of disturbances on the process design and operation, as well as its ideal performance, under a variety of control schemes can be estimated. The method is illustrated using a mini-integrated plant as a case study.