Short-Term Scheduling

In this chapter, the concept of the state sequence network (SSN) representation, which is the cornerstone of the material entailed in this textbook, is presented. This representation is based on states only, eliminating the use of tasks and units. Using this new representation as a basis, a novel continuous time MILP formulation for short-term scheduling of multipurpose batch plants is developed (Majozi and Zhu, 2001, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 40(25): 5935–5949). The presented formulation can readily be extended to intermediate due date scenarios. Time points are used to denote the use or production of a particular state. This formulation leads to a small number of binary variables and much better results when compared to other continuous time formulations published in literature. The reduced number of binary variables is a result of considering states only, thereby eliminating binary variables corresponding to tasks and units. This method has been applied to literature examples and industrial problems which show significant improvement in reducing the number of binary variables, hence CPU times. The last section of this chapter introduces the concept of units aggregation in reducing the binary dimension of large-scale problems. This makes it possible for the method to solve large-scale industrial problems. In the forthcoming chapters of this textbook it will be demonstrated how this formulation is applied in the context of batch process integration with the ultimate aim of freshwater and energy optimization.