PROCESS OPTIMISATION - DESIGN AND OPERATION: A PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE

ICI has a long established involvement in the development and application of engineering software for the design and operation of chemical processes. 1967 saw the first real practical milestones of on-line process optimisation, as applied to one of its Olefines plants, and flowsheeting techniques, eg Network 67, applied to process design optimisation. This paper, twenty years on, describes in detail the current ICI approaches to process optimisation, firstly in the design stage using FLOWPACK II, and secondly during plant operation by the application of custom-built equation based simulations known as HAMBLE models.