Process Intermediate Storage Operational Philosophy: The New Operational Philosophy

Overview

In Chapter 2 a mathematical formulation for scheduling that is based on the SSN recipe representation was presented. In this chapter this mathematical formulation is adapted to suit a novel operational philosophy, the Process Intermediate Storage (PIS) operational philosophy. Whilst exploiting this operational philosophy, the adapted formulation is used to synthesize, schedule and design multipurpose batch plants. Two cases are studied to determine the effectiveness of this operational philosophy. In the first case, which excludes any dedicated storage, the use of this operational philosophy results in 50% improvement in throughout. The second case is used to determine the minimum amount of intermediate storage while maintaining the throughput achieved with infinite intermediate storage. This results in 20% reduction in the amount of dedicated intermediate storage. In both cases the structure of the models is MILP. Furthermore, the MINLP design model is developed to exploit the attributes of the PIS operational philosophy.