Optimal Synthesis for the Retrofitting of Multiproduct Batch Plants

For change of a market condition such as increase of demand and new selling price, an optimal retrofit method is proposed through adding new equipment to an existing multiproduct batch plant. Until now, the optimum volume and the appropriate position of adding equipment have been solved using a mixed integer nonlinear program. In this paper, a heuristic procedure is presented which first determines the positions of adding equipment. Then a nonlinear programming is formulated to obtain their optimum sizes. The effectiveness of this method is verified by solving several literature problems.