AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO A DESIGN SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF CONTINUOUS CHEMICAL, PROCESSES

A successful, computer-aided design support system can help a process designer focus on making effective design decisions, not merely tediou s routine calculations. Such a system is essential to enhance quality of design in terms of economics, environmental benignity, reliability, robustness, and operability. Such a statement is even more accepted w hen applied to conceptual design problems, where gross design specific ations are given while a combinatorial number of design alternatives e xists. This paper presents an agent-based approach as a systematic and efficient way to design a computer-aided support system for the synth esis of continuous, single-product chemical processes. An agent-based approach allows us to handle design knowledge as an object and thus gr eatly improve the modularity and reusability of that knowledge. Such m odularity leads to increased ease in the relaxation of design decision s and the generation of design alternatives, both of which functions a re critically important in dealing with the complexity and uncertainty of conceptual design problems. Such reusability leads to the increase d productivity in the development of a design support system.