LIFE-CYCLE ORIENTED PROCESS SYNTHESIS AT CONCEPTUAL PLANNING PHASE

Today's process industry is facing severe business conditions, such as mega-competition, and increased market uncertainty. In the circumstan ces, a life cycle oriented approach, which evaluates and makes decisio ns based on expected profit through plant life cycle, is critical as a new management principle in the process industry. In the plant life c ycle consisting of planning, designing, construction, operation, and d isposal, the planning and designing phases are the most important beca use about 85% of the life cycle cost is determined by the decisions ma de in these phases. For this reason, a process synthesis approach, whi ch generates profitable process systems at the conceptual planning pha se based on decisions considering plant life cycle, is essential to ma nage profitability under today's business conditions. In this paper, t he life cycle oriented process synthesis approach which establishes a process plan at the conceptual planning phase so as to maximize the ex pected profit through the plant life cycle in consideration of capacit y, life, availability, reliability, and maintainability of each proces s unit, and future process scenarios, such as expansions, modification s, and shutdown is proposed. In addition, a heuristic process synthesi s procedure for this approach is proposed. The effectiveness of the li fe cycle oriented process synthesis approach and the proposed process synthesis procedure are demonstrated. In addition, areas of further re search and development related to the life cycle oriented process synt hesis are addressed.