Economic achievement of environmental regulation in chemical process industries

This paper presents an integrated approach for economic achievement of environmental regulation from existing total sites. The approach follows a hierarchical method that combines physical insights with mathematical methods. An understanding of the problem is used to generate options in the first step. The second step uses economics and site feasibility to screen options. The options left after screening are formulated in a superstructure. The optimisation of the superstructure gives an optimum mix of options that are then translated into the retrofit design. An important feature of the method is that understanding of the problem is used to generate options and proper bounds on different variables. This reduces the size, complexity and the solution space of the superstructure. Thus even large industrial problems can be solved effectively.