OPERATIONAL DESIGN FOR START-UP OF CHEMICAL PROCESSES

Aiming at designing more operable chemical processes, this paper prese nts an operational design methodology for the case of process start-up which evaluates and improves a process how diagram (PFD) into an oper ational flow diagram (OFD) by modifying the process structure, adjusti ng the process behavior and adding more facilities. An important contr olled group unit (CGU) concept is introduced, which can be operated in dependently from other parts of the process. This CGU concept makes it convenient to decompose the whole process into CGUs so that the compl icated design problem can be narrowed down and simplified. A multi-lev el blackboard architecture is used to implement such a design methodol ogy which supports an interactive environment for engineers. Object or ientation is used to implement the knowledge sources which improves th e blackboard performance. Finally, the methodology is illustrated by a simple example and then is evaluated by an industrial hydrogen-desulf urization process design case study. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.