Multi-criteria Optimization of an Industrial World-Scale Process

Commercially available flow sheet simulators cannot perform optimization runs with more than one criterion. To overcome this problem, the flow sheet simulator CHEMCAD is combined with an external optimization solver, and the Excel VBA client is used to arrange inter-process communications. The resulting tool for multi-criteria optimization in chemical process engineering is applied to two separation problems. First, a dividing-wall column is used as a theoretical example to test different starting points and different scalarization techniques. Second, a significant decrease in energy demand is achieved for a real continuous world-scale facility.