Process as a battery: Electricity price aware optimal operation of zeolite crystallization in a continuous oscillatory baffled reactor

Abstract

The electrification of chemical processes links the production costs and the CO2-footprint of the process industry more and more tightly to the price of electric power and the availability of power from renewable sources. Both for economic and for ecologic reasons, it is desirable to adapt the consumption to the availability of power from renewables. This work considers the optimal dynamic operation of a zeolite crystallization plant in a continuous oscillatory baffled reactor. The demand-side management problem is first investigated using a steady-state model. For the dynamic optimization problem, a moving horizon approach is introduced, and the effect of the terminal sell-off on the dynamic optimization is minimized by the usage of a terminal cost and additional horizons. The performance of the scheme is tested using different scenarios for the electric energy prices. Additionally, the influence of the uncertainty of the predictions of the price of electric power is addressed.