A DECOMPOSITION-BASED APPROACH FOR PROCESS OPTIMIZATION AND SIMULTANEOUS HEAT INTEGRATION - APPLICATION TO AN INDUSTRIAL-PROCESS

Process integration possibilities are explored in this paper through a postulation of the overall synthesis problem as a mixed integer progr amming model, where heat integration possibilities, including mixing o f different streams, are considered simultaneously with the rest proce ss optimization. A decomposition method is employed for the solution o f the overall problem, where the heat integration problem is solved in an inner synthesis step, while the process flowsheet is optimized in an outer step, utilizing the information from the process heat integra tion potential. An application of the proposed synthesis procedure to an industrial case study is presented.