(534f) Design and Synthesis of Energy Integrated Multipurpose Batch Plants Using a Robust Scheduling Platform

In recent years batch plants have attracted more attention due to their flexibility to produce different products using the same facility. Batch manufacturing is typically used in the pharmaceutical, polymer, food and speciality chemical industries, because it provides the necessary flexibility to accommodate various production requirements using the same processing facility. However, these very important features introduce extra degrees of complexity into the design, synthesis and operation of such plants.  Utility requirements in these plants can be a major contributor to overall running costs. Heating and cooling are unavoidable aspects of many chemical processing facilities, with operations where heat is generated and others where heat is required. It is because of this occurrence that heat integration becomes a possibility for reducing utility requirements. Energy savings have often been neglected in the design and synthesis of batch processes in the past and so large percentage savings are possible.

The contribution in this paper is developing a comprehensive optimization technique for design and synthesis of heat integrated batch plants. In batch chemical processes it is highly imperative to optimize the schedule before design. The recent scheduling technique for multipurpose batch plants by Seid and Majozi (2012) is used as a platform. Computational studies are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The result obtained shows that the utility design should be part of the same model for economic saving.