Automated targeting for conventional and bilateral property-based resource conservation network

Resource conservation is an effective way to reduce operation cost and to maintain business sustainability. Most previous works have been restricted to "chemo-centric" or concentration-based systems where the characterisation of the streams and constraints on the process sinks are described in terms of the concentration of pollutants. However, there are many applications in which stream quality is characterised by physical or chemical properties rather than pollutant concentration. In this work, the automated targeting approach originally developed for the synthesis of composition-based resource conservation network is extended for property-based network. In particular, targeting for the property-based networks with process modification and interception processes are addressed. Based on the concept of insight-based targeting approach, the automated targeting technique is formulated as a linear programming (LP) model for which the global optimum is guaranteed if a solution exists. In case(s) where process modification is involved, the automated targeting technique is formulated as a non-linear programming (NLP) model, in which is solved globally by commercial optimisation software. In addition, a new approach for the bilateral property integration problem is also presented in this work. Literature and industrial case studies are solved to illustrate the proposed approach. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.