Mathematically Rigorous Algebraic and Graphical Techniques for Targeting Minimum Resource Requirement and Interplant Flow Rate for Total Site Involving Two Plants

Abstract

Minimization of the overall resource (e.g., water, hydrogen, material, etc.) requirement and the minimum interplant flow rate to achieve the overall minimum resource requirement across two resource allocation networks (RANs) have been presented in this paper. The resource requirement for a single RAN can be minimized through established mathematical and/or pinch-based methodologies. The overall resource requirement can further be minimized by integrating RANs at the site level. While integrating two RANs at the site level, for the reduction of overall resource requirement, it is also important to minimize the interplant flow rate across them. Mathematically these minimization problems can be modeled as linear programming problems. However, on the basis of the special mathematical features of this problem, an algorithmic procedure as well as a graphical procedure are developed to target the minimum overall resource requirement by integrating two RANs and also to minimize the interplant flow rate, satisfyin...