Modeling and Optimization for Scheduling of Chemical Batch Processes

Chemical batch processes have become significant in chemical manufacturing. In these processes, largenumbers of chemical products are produced to satisfy human demands in daily life. Recently, economy globalization has resulted in growing worldwide competitions in traditional chemical process industry. In order to keep competitive in the global marketplace, each company must optimize its production management and set up a reactive system for market fluctuation. Scheduling is the core of production management in chemical processes. The goal of this paper is to review the recent developments in this challenging area. Classifications of batch schedulingproblems and optimization methods are introduced. A comparison of six typical models is shown in a general benchmark example from the literature. Finally, challenges and applications in future research are discussed. © 2009 Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China (CIESC) and Chemical Industry Press (CIP).