Flexibility analysis of chemical processes considering overlaying uncertainty sources

Abstract

Chemical processes are often subject to uncertainty. Consequently, the evaluation of the flexibility of a process with respect to variations in inlet conditions is vital to identify bottlenecks in current process flowsheets or new flowsheet design proposals. The flexibility index is a well-established concept to perform flexibility analysis of chemical processes. In this paper, we propose novel reformulations of the flexibility index problem to account for overlaying uncertainty sources which interfere with each other. The aim of the paper is to identify and define overlaying uncertainty sources and to overcome shortcomings of existing approaches when calculating the flexibility index in such situations.