MINIMIZATION OF THE ANNUAL COST FOR COMPLETE UTILITY SYSTEMS

A new strategy for the automatic synthesis of complete utility systems is presented in order to satisfy the requirements of cooling, heating and power at the minimum annual capital and operating cost. The formu lation of the problem and the corresponding superstructure are left op en to consider any number and level of utilities, equipment units and energy types, with all their properties. The algorithm also includes e xploring the purchase of utility instead of its generation and selling generated energy not consumed in the plant. As the process variables are described as time dependent functions, the same methodology can be extended further to consider time dependent processes.