New Approach for Quantifying Process Feasibility: Convex and 1-D Quasi-Convex Regions

Uncertainities in chemical plants come from numerous sources: internal like fluctu- atedalues of reaction constants and physical properties or external such as quality and flow rates of feedstreams. Accounting for uncertainty inarious stages of plant opera- tions was identified as one of the most important problems in chemical plant design and operations. A new approach proposed describes process's feasible region and a new metric for ealuating process flexibility based on the conex hull that is inscribed within the feasible region and determines itsolume based on Delaunay Triangulation. The two steps inoled are: 1. a series of simple optimization problems are soled to deter- mine points at the boundary of the feasible region; 2. gien the set of points at the boundary of the feasible region, the conex hull inscribed within the feasible region is determined. This is achieed by implementing the Quickhull algorithm, an incremental procedure for ealuating the conex hull, and then by computing a Delaunay Triangula- tion to determine theolume of the conex hull proiding a new metric for process flexibility. This approach not only proides another feasibility measure, but an accurate description of the feasible space of the process. It was applied to 1-D conex problems, and work is in progress to extend it to nonconex systems.