(554e) Monte Carlo Optimization for Site Selection of New Chemical Plant

The geographical location of the plant contributes a lot to the success of any chemical business venture. Besides the traditional site selection rules, the safety of the surrounding community should also be taken into consideration for site selection.  During the plant operation, air emission events such as intensive flaring and toxic gas will occur.  This changeable regional meteorology will also affect its final impact scope and severity.  Therefore the potential impact of should be evaluated during the risk assessment so as to timely and effectively support diagnostic and prognostic decisions. 

In this research, a systematic methodology for such applications has been developed.  It includes two stages of modeling and optimization work: i) Monte Carlo based simulation for normal emission rates from current multiple emission sources and ii) multi-objective optimization for site selection of new chemical plant.  For multi-objective optimization, the first objective function aims to minimize the peak pollutant concentration at AQCR grouped by manipulating the binary variables of plant location selections while the second objective targets to reduce the standard deviation of the additional pollutant concentration at AQCR. It is the quantitative representation of pollution concentration difference change caused by the new plant installation.This study can not only determine the potential impact for the distribution of multiple chemical plants responsible for the characteristics of regional climate, but also identify an optimal site selection with minimal environment impact to the surrounding community.  Case studies are employed to demonstrate the efficacy of the developed methodology.