ABSTRACT
Presented in this chapter is a mathematical technique for simultaneous heat integration and process scheduling in multipurpose batch plants. Taking advantage of the intermittent continuous behaviour of process streams during transfer from one processing unit to another, as determined by the recipe, the presented formulation aims to maximize the coincidence of availability of hot and cold stream pairs with feasible temperature driving forces, while taking into consideration process scheduling constraints. Distinct from similar contributions in the published literature, time is treated as one of the key optimization variables instead of a parameter fixed a priori. Heat integration during stream transfer has the added benefit of shortened residence time in processing units, which invariably improves the throughput, as more batches are likely to be processed within a given time horizon, compared to conventional cases with heating and cooling in situ.
