CADSIM Plus simulator, evolutionary algorithms, rule based expert system, neural network

In industries, chemical processes involve different plants running in parallel with different production rates under the strict constraints on available resources. Therefore, events like shutdown of one or more plants, operating plants with different production grades with flexible run length time, equipment utilization rates of different plants etc. are vital to be studied, scheduled, and optimized. CADSIM Plus is a popular software which simulates different chemical processes in industries and thus ensures an effective production in practice. The software is used by more than 220 companies and organizations all over the world. The objective of this project is to investigate and develop efficient optimization methods that can be integrated with CADSIM Plus for chemical process production line scheduling. The task of chemical process production line scheduling is a complex operation and cannot be modeled directly by simple mathematical equations. Therefore, optimizing the product line scheduling as well as CADSIM Plus yields a non-trivial optimization problem and requires robust techniques to solve.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Lutz Lampe

Student:

Ahmed Imtiaz

Partner:

Aurel Systems Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Chemicals

University:

University of British Columbia