The Design and Scheduling of Multipurpose Batch Plants

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In multipurpose batch plants, the production rates are strongly dependent not only on the level of the available resources, but also on the efficiency of resource utilisation. Consequently, plant scheduling must be considered simultaneously with the plant design problem. This paper considers the design of multipurpose batch plants operating in a cyclic mode in which the same pattern of operations is repeated at a constant frequency over long time periods. The design problem involves the simultaneous determination of the required levels of processing equipment, storage capacity, and utility provisions, as well as a detailed cyclic operating schedule that fully exploits the inherent flexibility of batch plants in utilising such resources. This problem is formulated rigorously as a mixed integer linear program (MILP) that is solved by a branch-and-bound method, enhanced by exploiting the problem structure.