DECOMPOSED ALGORITHMIC SYNTHESIS OF REACTOR SEPARATION RECYCLE SYSTEMS

A two-level algorithmic approach to synthesis of reaction-separation-r ecycle systems is presented. On the upper level, reactor conversion an d purge fraction are optimized using a simple direct search method, an d the flow among subsystems such as the reactor system and separation system are calculated. On the lower level, individual subsystems are o ptimized in every iteration of the upper level loop. On this level, th e structure and operating conditions of the subsystems are determined, and the cost is returned to the upper level. This decomposed approach makes the synthesis of the overall system less complex and more robus t than approaches addressing the entire problem simultaneously. The pr eviously published results using the Hierarchical Decomposition Proced ure, and the optimal results are demonstrated to be insensitive to ini tial estimates.