Optimization of Water Network Design and Dynamic Operation for Agile Batch Manufacturing

Water network design (WND) is of great importance to effective use of valuable water, which plays key role in not only the reduction of freshwater and associated energy consumption, but also the curbing of wastewater generation. While researches on WND have been extensively performed on continuous process, there is a lack of studies on agile batch manufacturing by providing systematic methodologies for simultaneous optimization of water network topology and dynamic operation. Agile batch manufacturing, characterized by their flexibility in producing small quantities of high-value added products with multipurpose equipment, shows great potential for future chemicals production with enormous flexibility and responsibility to product and process uncertainties. When WND is taken into account into agile batch manufacturing, the water network structure can be changeable responding to different time periods and custom recipes, thereby involves water flow changing dynamically.

In this paper, a systematic methodology for the optimization of a flexible superstructure WND and its dynamic operation has been developed.  The flexible superstructure can adopt four production recipes and the dynamic operations by switching one production recipe to another is optimally determined in terms of  minimum operational costs.