A heuristic design advisor for incorporating pollution prevention concepts in chemical process design

Abstract

 The application of pollution prevention concepts to chemical process design is often hampered by lack of sufficient information about potential design alternatives. The high cost of collecting this information can thus present act as a constraint on the thoroughness of the final design optimization. One approach to dealing with such data constraints is the application of design heuristics. Particularly when coupled with the use of robust optimization methods, heuristic approaches can provide useful insight and direction at all stages of the design effort.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been developing a heuristic-based tool for use in chemical process design. Known as the Process Heuristic Review of Environmental Design (PHRED) this design tool uses conventional backwards chaining expert systems techniques to identify and prioritize applicable design heuristics based on a minimal set of process data. The development philosophy and current status of the PHRED tool are discussed in this paper.