Batch manufacturing plants require the frequent adaptation of production facilities to incorporate internal and external uncertainties. The introduction of flexibility in the design of general-purpose plants represents a cornerstone for the design and retrofit of batch processes along the plants lifecycle. Moreover, the integration of batch process development decisions during the plant design also contributes to handle uncertainty. This paper presents a novel optimization-based approach for the flexible design of batch plants by integrating process synthesis and plant allocation decisions, such as feed-forward control trajectories of processing conditions or the selection of operating modes and equipment items. To do so, a modeling strategy based on Mixed-Logic Dynamic Optimization and two-stage stochastic formulation is used to maximize the expected profit taking into account several uncertain scenarios. Moreover, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve the resulting problem that is characterized by a great complexity, consisting of an iterative procedure with embedded deterministic solutions of the integrated problem. The proposed approach is illustrated through the design of a single-product batch plant to carry out a competitive reaction process.

Peer Reviewed