Multi-objective hybrid intelligent optimization of operational indices for industrial processes and application

To pursuit the plant-wide optimization of multiple units industrial process, a hybrid intelligent optimization approach under dynamic environment is proposed. The objective of optimization is that the production indices defined as the performance related to the final product quality, yield, energy and material consumption fall into their target ranges; whilst the decision variables are operational indices of each unit, which is related to units' intermediate product quality, efficiency and consumption. In this context, the domain knowledge of process engineers are mimicked and combined with the framework in terms of feedback, prediction and feed-forward schemes so as to realize the required optimization. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been demonstrated by the practical application results. © 2011 IFAC.