THE GENERATION AND USE OF PARTIAL SOLUTIONS IN-PROCESS SYNTHESIS

The use of automated tools can be of great benefit to an engineer invo lved in a large, complex task such as the design of a chemical plant. Such tools, however, must provide the engineer with more than just a s olution to the problem. It is vital what the engineer be given an insi ght into the reasons far the choice of a given solution. This is parti cularly important in optimization of complex problems. In these cases, the advantages of the solution (other than a better value of the obje ctive function) are often not immediately obvious and the user is aske d to take the results on faith. A process synthesis procedure which pr ovides some indication of why a particular design alternative was chos en can be invaluable, especially during the early stages of design whe n many decisions are still to be made. This paper describes a novel im plicit enumeration method, using dynamic programming, which enables an d encourages an engineer to easily explore the solution space for new problems. When completely feasible solutions are not available, the sy nthesis tool provides information in the form of partial solutions whi ch can lead to a better understanding of or a different perspective on the problem. Using partial solutions, the method can itself generate better solutions, dynamically increasing the search space for solution s that include complex recycle structures.