A General Framework for Process Synthesis, Integration and Intensification. In Computer Aided Chemical Engineering

Block-based superstructure (Demirel et al., 2017; Li et al., 2017) offers advantages over classical unit operation-based process synthesis approaches as it leverages upon building blocks to represent different physicochemical phenomena, processing tasks and equipment configurations. In this work, we extend this approach to demonstrate that the same block superstructure representation can be used to perform simultaneous synthesis, integration and intensification in a unified framework. The block-based representation also enables automatic generation of intensified flowsheets without a priori postulation of connectivity. Moreover, it is generic enough to be reduced to various process integration network problems, such as heat exchanger networks, fuel gas networks, water networks, etc. A literature example is used to demonstrate the benefits of block superstructure for the particular case of flowsheet generation and heat exchanger network synthesis (HENS).