An Optimal Control Approach to Scheduling and Production in a Process using Decaying Catalysts

Abstract This article presents a novel approach to optimise scheduling and production planning to meet seasonal demand in an industrial process using decaying catalysts, based on its formulation as a multistage mixed-integer optimal control problem (MSMIOCP). Unlike existing methodologies, the MSMIOCP formulation allows to solve this problem as a standard nonlinear optimisation problem without combinatorial optimisation methods, which can be advantageous in providing reliable, robust and efficient solutions. Using this formulation, four case studies of this problem, differing in reaction or deactivation kinetics, are investigated. Two different solution implementations are used, each having their own relative advantages. The first implementation demonstrates a bang-bang behaviour for the linear scheduling controls, consistent with a theoretical analysis, but faces integration problems and does not always produce high quality solutions. The second implementation, while not demonstrating the bang-bang property, always produces high quality solutions and shows the advantages of the MSMIOCP formulation over existing methodologies.