Automated optimization of process plant using particle swarm optimization

Nowadays general-purpose process plant simulators are used widely in industry and in academia, reason being process model can be developed more rigorously with fewer endeavors and the graphical user interface makes the realization of model less time consuming. During the development phase of a process model we often have a lot of variables that has to vary to get the best solution among several candidates. The automation potential of the simulator can be exploited to look for the best solution by varying these variables under some optimization scheme. In this study the Particle Swarm Optimization was used to optimize the process plant under the automation of process simulator Hysys. In the case study Natural Gas liquefaction plant was used to optimize and results show that the method can save energy and improves the process efficiency.