A Flexible Structural and Operational Design of Steam Systems

Abstract

A systematic design methodology is developed in this work for synthesizing the steam distribution network (SDN) in chemical process to satisfy period-varying demands. Specifically, the flexible model is developed for the better energy management, and a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) is formulated to minimize the total annualized cost (TAC) of the network design. For multi-period operation problems, the operation condition varying with time period is adopted in this study. When the structure of network is synthesized, operating conditions allows to be adjusted in company with period to maintain high efficiency of plants. The integration of SDN is achieved by the simultaneous optimization of the configuration and operating conditions. Case studies are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of the proposed approach.