Simulated Annealing Approach to the Optimal Synthesis of Distillation Column with Intermediate Heat Exchangers

• Published in: Chinese journal of chemical engineering Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 30 - 35
• Main Author: 安维中 于凤娟 董凤蕾 胡仰栋
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.02.2008
• Subjects: distillation; intermediate heat exchanger; mixed integer nonlinear programming; simulated annealing; synthesis; 中间换热器; 优化综合; 模拟退火方法; 精馏塔; intermediate heat exchanger; synthesis; mixed integer nonlinear programming; simulated annealing; distillation
• ISSN: 1004-9541; 2210-321X
• DOI: 10.1016/S1004-9541(08)60031-2

This article presents a simulated annealing-based approach to the optimal synthesis of distillation column considering intermediate heat exchangers arrangements. T-he number of intermediate condensers and/or intermediate reboilers, the placement locations, the.operating pressure of column, and the heat duties of intermediate heat exchangers are treated as optimization variables. A novel coding procedure making use of an integer number series is proposed to represent and manipulate the structure of system and a stage-to-stage method is used for column design and cost calculation. With the representation procedure, the synthesis problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming （MINLP） problem, which can then be solved with an improved simulated annealing algorithm. Two examples are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the suggested approach.