Es. Fraga et Trs. Matias, SYNTHESIS AND OPTIMIZATION OF A NONIDEAL DISTILLATION SYSTEM USING A PARALLEL GENETIC ALGORITHM, Computers & chemical engineering, 20, 1996, pp. 79-84
The automated synthesis of separation sequences for nonideal mixtures
has only recently been attempted. The need for rigorous physical prope
rty estimation procedures along with the possibly complex recycle stru
ctures leads to the specification of a nonlinear programming problem,
one in which both the objective function and the feasibility region ar
e nonconvex. This paper describes the use of a stochastic optimization
procedure, genetic algorithms, for the optimization of a preselected
sequence of distillation units for the separation of a three component
azeotropic mixture. By fixing the structure in terms of the units des
ired, the optimization problem is reduced to one of designing each of
the relevant units, choosing the appropriate operating conditions, and
finding the optimal heat exchange network. To tackle the high computa
tional effort required, the implementation uses a distributed memory m
ulticomputer in the form of a network of workstations.