Development of an Optimization-Based Framework for Simultaneous Process Synthesis and Heat Integration

With the increasing attention toward renewable platform chemicals, a considerable amount of reaction pathways are being investigated for the potential of scale-up and industrialization. Heat integration, as a key feature in the field of process engineering, needs to be taken into consideration when developing preliminary reaction networks producing value-added products. In this study, we introduce an optimization-based framework for the simultaneous process synthesis and heat integration with the goal of finding the most profitable biobased platform chemical and its production pathways from a number of alternatives. A process superstructure that consists of master reaction stages and lower-level separation stages is introduced to demonstrate the theory. With a novel variable discretization approach, the problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model to determine the optimal reaction pathways and separation sequences along with the heat integration cascade using simple data. The solutions to the problem reveal key information of the optimal flowsheet such as the maximum economic performance the process can achieve and the minimum cooling and heating duties required resulting from the heat integration analysis. A case study is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach.