SYNTHESIS OF BATCH REACTION/DISTILLATION PROCESSES USING DETAILED DYNAMIC-MODELS

This paper considers the synthesis of processes comprising batch reaction and distillation tasks. Complex process features, such as material recycles and shared intermediates are taken into account. The problem is formulated as a multistage optimal control problem. A control vector parametrisation, approach is utilised to reduce this infinite dimensional dynamic problem to a finite dimensional nonlinear programming problem. An example involving an exothermic reaction step followed by a batch distillation is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.