A simple unit specific event based modeling framework for short term scheduling and heat integration of batch plants: Design and optimization of heat storage vessels

Energy conservation has been one of the prime research objectives of the global scientific community. Heat integration has been a promising intensification technique for energy conservation in chemical industries. In this work, a simple unit-specific event-based framework is proposed for short term scheduling and heat integration. Using the concept of active task, various modelling issues such as task alignments, energy balances, direct and indirect heat integrations have been handled precisely with minimum number of equations and variables. The effect of the amount of thermal fluid, initial temperature and number of storage vessels on profit is systematically analyzed. The accuracy of the proposed framework is demonstrated using three benchmark examples. The proposed model could effectively incorporate the direct and indirect heat integration and external utility usage. The computational results show that this integration leads to an optimum of two heat storage vessels as against three reported by Sebelebele and Majozi (2017). (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Energy conservation is a prime research objective, and heat integration is a promising technique in the chemical industry. A simple unit-specific event-based framework for scheduling and heat integration is proposed, effectively handling various modelling issues with minimum equations and variables. The computational results show an optimal integration with two heat storage vessels, different from previous studies.