THE USE OF DYNAMIC-PROGRAMMING WITH PARALLEL COMPUTERS FOR PROCESS SYNTHESIS

The generation of optimal heat integrated separation sequences is an i mportant and basic task in chemical process design. The efficient gene ration of these sequences is crucial because design packages must gene rate many such sequences. We describe the use of parallel computers to reduce the time required to determine the optimal sequences. In this paper, we concentrate on the use of discrete programming techniques, w ith particular emphasis on the use of dynamic programming, as implemen ted on distributed memory multi-computers. We show that, although dyna mic programming was superseded for some problems by the use of combine d methods including branch and bound for serial machines, a parallel i mplementation of dynamic programming for process synthesis can be supe rior.