GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION OF CHEMICAL PROCESSES USING THE INTERVAL-ANALYSIS

Optimization of chemical processes often leads to nonlinear programmin g problems that are nonconvex. Such problems may possess many local op tima, whose objective function values vary significantly from one to a nother. Thus identifying the global optimum is an important, albeit di fficult, endeavor. A deterministic algorithm based on interval analysi s branch and bound is proposed in this paper to be suitable for global optimization of chemical processes.