INTEGRATED BATCH PLANT-DESIGN - A POLYMER PLANT CASE-STUDY

Batch plant design is concerned with selecting unit operations, their operating conditions, the necessary production resources and an operat ing schedule. Traditional approaches to batch plant design involve a s equence of decisions taken in isolation, with manual transfer of infor mation between design stages. Usually, in the first stage the operatio nal details of each processing step are studied, perhaps through dynam ic simulation, and then fixed. The next design stage considers the all ocation of resources to each step, possibly taking account of producti on scheduling. The information transfer between these stages is limite d, often unidirectional and somewhat ad-hoc. Here, we consider a more integrated approach to the design of batch plants, in the context of t he conceptual design of a mixed batch/semicontinuous PVC plant. We des cribe the application bf state-of-the art multipurpose plant schedulin g and simulation technology to the solution of this problem, and the t ransfer of data between these tools. This leads to a design that is mo re robust, as well as to the definition of a more rigorous design proc edure.