A Bacterial Foraging Approach for Safer Plant Layout Designs

This article proposes a method to provide support to expert decision-making in designing the layout of chemical plants. Our approach applies the Bacterial Foraging Algorithm, a meta-heuristic optimization scheme, to determine an allocation of main process units in the two-dimensional space. The optimization aims at minimizing a total cost measure, which accounts for both the capital costs associated with usage of the area, piping, and secondary contention, and the expected costs generated by equipment losses incurred in case of explosions. To assess fire and explosion hazards, we use Dow's Fire and Explosion Index, which provides a convenient means to estimate equipment allocation's inherent danger and map it into prescriptions of minimal distances between units. The proposed solution approach provides an alternative to hard-optimization methods by allowing greater flexibility in accounting for both safety and economic aspects, while providing high-quality solutions in reduced computation time. A case study of an acrylic acid production plant, which several other papers in the literature have also used, serves the purpose of demonstrating the appropriateness and effectiveness of the method.

Automated summary

This article proposes a method to support expert decision-making in designing the layout of chemical plants. The method uses the Bacterial Foraging Algorithm to determine the allocation of main process units in a two-dimensional space, with the goal of minimizing total cost. Fire and explosion hazards are assessed using Dow's Fire and Explosion Index. The proposed method allows for flexibility in considering both safety and economic aspects, while providing high-quality solutions in reduced computation time.