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Environmental-impact reduction through simultaneous design, scheduling, and operation

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Abstract

Processing facilities are normally designed with sufficient flexibility to handle nominal variations. When the process features planned changes in feedstock and products, scheduling is often used to optimize process operation. Proper scheduling may be limited to existing design or may entail retrofitting. Traditionally, economic objectives have served as the primary drivers for the design, retrofitting, and scheduling of industrial processes. Once a base design and scheduling plan have been established, environmental issues are addressed in many cases as an afterthought. As a result of this sequential approach, valuable synergisms and tradeoffs of economic and environmental objectives are often missed. The objective of this study is to develop a new approach to design and scheduling with economic and environmental objectives. Specifically, this study introduces a systematic framework and the associated mathematical formulation for simultaneous process design and scheduling while simultaneously addressing economic and environmental objectives. Therefore, this study establishes two types of proper tradeoffs (a) between design and scheduling and (b) between economic and environmental objectives. The environmental issues pertaining to the parameterized process retrofitting, scheduling, and operation strategies are simultaneously considered along with the environmental impact of these changes. An optimization formulation is developed for the case of project schedule while allowing design retrofitting changes that include new environmental units and modification of design and operating conditions in the process (without new process units). Also, a process model with the appropriate level of relevant details is included in the formulation. The projected schedule is discretized to allow for a multiperiod formulation with algebraic equations. The resulting framework identifies opportunities for synergism between the economic and environmental objectives. It also determines points of diminishing return beyond which tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives are established. The devised procedure is illustrated with a case study on an oil refinery with scheduling of different products and the design of an environmental system that addresses NO x emission.

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Abbreviations

i u :

Input stream to process unit

i v :

Input stream to environmental management unit

j u :

Output stream from process unit

j v :

Output stream from environmental management unit

p :

Product

q :

Material

t :

Time

u :

Process unit

v :

Environmental management unit

w :

Waste stream

EMU :

Environmental management units

INPUT:

Input streams

OUTPUT:

Output streams

P :

Product amount

PERIODS:

Operating periods

Q :

Materials

t h :

Time horizon

U:

Process units

WASTES:

Environmental discharges for the process

\( d_{u}^{\min } \) :

Minimum design variable

\( d_{u}^{\max } \) :

Maximum design variable

Loadenv :

Maximum load released of a waste to environment

\( P_{p,t}^{\rm {Demand}} \) :

Demand of product p at tth period

\( o_{u}^{\min } \) :

Minimum operating variable

\( o_{u}^{\max } \) :

Maximum operating variable

Z env :

Maximum allowable release of a waste to environment

\( C_{p,t}^{\rm product} \) :

The unit selling price of product p during period t

d :

Design variable

\( F_{{i_{u} ,t}} \) :

Flowrate for the i u th input to the process unit

\( F_{{i_{v} ,t}} \) :

Mixed flow rate to EMUs

\( G_{{j_{u} ,t}} \) :

Flowrate for the j u th output from the process unit

\( g_{{j_{u} ,i_{v} }} \) :

Flowrate assigned from source j u to destination i v during period t

I v :

A binary integer variable designating the presence or absence of the vth EMU

\( {\hbox {Net}}\_{\hbox {Gen}}_{u,q,t} \) :

Generation of material q

\( p_{{j_{u} ,p,t}} \) :

Flowrate assigned from j u to the pth product stream

p :

Operating variable

POC t :

The plant operating cost during period t

\( r_{{j_{v} ,i_{u} ,t}} \) :

Flowrate recycled back to the process to the i u th input of the uth unit

TACEMU :

The total annualized cost of the environmental management system

W w :

Flowrate of the wth waste stream

\( w_{{j_{v} ,w,t}} \) :

Flowrate assigned to the wth waste stream

W w,t :

Flowrate of the wth waste stream during the tth period

\( X_{{i_{u} ,q,t}} \) :

Composition of material q in the input stream i u to the process unit

\( Y_{{j_{u} ,q,t}} \) :

Composition of material q in output stream j u th

Z w,q :

Composition of the qth pollutant in the wth waste stream

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Acknowledgment

E. M. Al-Mutairi thanks King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) for its financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemical Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia

    Eid M. Al-Mutairi

  2. Holder of the McFerrin Professorship, Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-3122, USA

    Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi

Authors
  1. Eid M. Al-Mutairi
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  2. Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi
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Correspondence to Eid M. Al-Mutairi.

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Al-Mutairi, E.M., El-Halwagi, M.M. Environmental-impact reduction through simultaneous design, scheduling, and operation. Clean Techn Environ Policy 12, 537–545 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-009-0259-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-009-0259-7

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