Integrated flexibility and controllability analysis in design of chemical processes

A systematic approach for the synthesis of flexible and controllable plants is presented It provides a new quantitative measure of the flexibility and controllability of a design and allows the designer to systematically evaluate different process structures and/or control systems. An integrated approach based on the dynamic mired-integer nonlinear-programming problem is introduced that consists of two stages in each iteration of the algorithm. In this way, the effect of disturbances on the process design and operation, as well as its ideal performance under a variety of control schemes can be estimated. The method is illustrated using a mini-integrated plant as a case study.