INTEGRATED FLEXIBILITY AND CONTROLLABILITY ANALYSIS IN DESIGN OF CHEMICAL PROCESSES

A systematic approach for the synthesis of flexible and controllable p lants is presented It provides a new quantitative measure of the flexi bility and controllability of a design and allows the designer to syst ematically evaluate different process structures and/or control system s. An integrated approach based on the dynamic mired-integer nonlinear -programming problem is introduced that consists of two stages in each iteration of the algorithm. In this way, the effect of disturbances o n the process design and operation, as well as its ideal performance u nder a variety of control schemes can be estimated. The method is illu strated using a mini-integrated plant as a case study.