(371v) Coupling Performing Numerical Libraries and Detailed Simulators to Accurately Infer/Reconcile Stack Emissions of Incinerator Systems

The paper discusses the possibility of coupling object-oriented programming languages such as Visual C++ and commercial simulators such as PRO/II to get an accurate and reliable estimation of emissions at the stack of incinerator processes by taking a series of benefits from their interaction as: 1. The simulation software provides a high-level and field-proven degree of detail in simulating processes. 2. Numerical libraries offers efficient and robust algorithms to solve complex, nonlinear, constrained optimization problems (such as data reconciliation, coaptation, and inference) by making them feasible even for on-line industrial applications. As the more and more stringent environmental regulations are forcing process industries to undergoes specific emission bounds, people is looking forward to switch from their current off-line technology to the on-line application of data reconciliation to prevent possible hard duties due environmental threshold violations. Facing the simplicity of solving the theoretical problem of reconciling/inferring stack emissions, as it is trivially accomplished by iteratively solving the problem at some specific time intervals usually evenly spaced, some overwhelming problems arise especially in ensuring performing solutions of complex and nonlinear systems and/or of large-scale optimization problems by accounting at the same time for the process unit details and the evolution of the plant. The research activity here proposed is the result of an academic and industrial collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and Chemprod Srl with the main aim to develop a reliable and generalized tool for oil refinery incinerator systems. C++ programming language and BzzMath library (Buzzi-Ferraris, 2010) are adopted as numerical kernel and the process simulator PRO/II (Simsci-Esscor, 2002) is adopted as rigorous model of the plant. The proposed solution is validated on an incinerator operating in an oil refinery placed in Sicily, Italy (Signor et al., 2010).

Quoted References

BUZZI-FERRARIS, G. (2010). BzzMath: Numerical library in C++. (Politecnico di Milano, http://chem.polimi.it/homes/gbuzzi).

SIGNOR, S., MANENTI, F., GROTTOLI, M.G., FABBRI, P., and PIERUCCI, S. (2010). Sulfur Recovery Units: Adaptive Simulation and Model Validation on Industrial Plants. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, DOI: 10.1021/ie901749t.

SIMSCI-ESSCOR. (2002). PRO/II, User Guide. Lake Forest, CA, USA, www.simsci-esscor.com.