International Journal of Chemical Engineering (Jan 2009)
Evolutionary Search for Globally Optimal Stable Multicycles in Complex Systems with Inventory Couplings
Abstract
This note is devoted to multiperiodically operated complex system with inventory couplings transferring waste products from some subsystems as useful components to other subsystems. The flexibility of the inventory couplings is used to force each of the subsystems with its own period and to exploit its particular dynamic properties. This enhances the performance of the complex system endowed with many recycling loops, which reduce the amount of waste products endangering the natural environment. The subsystems are characterized by generalized populations composed of the individuals (the cycles), each of them encompasses its period, its initial state, its local control, and its inventory interaction. An evolutionary optimization algorithm employing such generalized populations coordinated on the basis of the inventory interaction constraints is developed. It includes the stability requirements imposed on the cyclic control processes connected with particular subsystems. The algorithm proposed is applied to the global multiperiodic optimization of some interconnected chemical production processes.