Optimal design of operating procedures for chemical processes

In order to design more operable or even optimal chemical processes, a reliability theory is proposed to support the planning of operating procedures. The optimality can be achieved through the quantification, thoroughness, practicability, safety and energy conservation considerations of this methodology. A three-tier reasoning framework is constructed to describe the two-step quantitative planning strategy. The first step is the optimal operating path determination and the second step is the optimal primitive operations generation. This paper presents a knowledge-model (KM) method in which an expert knowledge base is combined with the process dynamic model to obtain an optimal operating path. Finally, the methodology is illustrated by an example of the temperature increasing procedure for a subsystem of charge gas dehydrator regeneration in an ethylene plant.