Simulation based Heuristics Methodology for Plant-wide Control of Industrial Processes

Plant-Wide Control (PWC) methodologies are increasingly important as the chemcial processes are becoming more and more integrated with recycles because of safety, environmental and economic concerns. Hence, in this paper, an integrated framework of simulation and heuristics is proposed; The main emphasis is on vertical integration of simulation and heuristics which exploits the inherent interlink between them. By adopting this framework, simulators can be more efficiently utilized and they also offer invaluable support to the decisions taken by heuristics. This framework is successfully applied to Hydrodealkylation of toluene (HDA) process. An analysis of the results shows that the proposed framework builds synergies between the powers of simulation and heuristics thereby resulting in a practical PWC methodology to develop a viable control system. Copyright © 2005 IFAC