Enhancement of a semi-batch chemical reactor efficiency through its dimensions optimization

Abstract

Efficiency of manufacturing processes is very important in today's competitive world with hard economic rules. In chemical engineering area the efficiency depends on the production heart, which is often a chemical reactor. In this paper authors describe process of optimal semi-batch exothermic reactor dimensions finding. The task is to find reactor dimensions which lead to process efficiency improving, i.e. to processing the greater chemicals amount in the same or shorter time. The optimizing process uses an objective function which includes also the reactor mathematical model. The objective function is modified here to find better results and necessary limitations and penalizations are used to improve the dimensions searching. An evolutionary approach represented by the Self-Organizing Migrating Algorithm (SOMA) was used to minimize the defined function. A suitability of the reactor with newly found dimensions was then verified by the process control simulations. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.