The PI plans to develop a flexible design and optimization strategy for pressure swing adsorption (PSA) systems for air separations. The approach incorporates realistic, detailed process models of partial differential equations (PDEs) and rigorous solution procedures and leads to a flexible and reliable optimization environment. The resulting strategy will allow for the addition and modification of adsorption isotherms and PDE solvers, application of new optimization algorithms, flexible configurations of different PSA systems, and extension to discrete and continuous variable optimization.
The approach the PI plans to use will integrate sophisticated and efficient optimization tools based on large-scale Successive Quadratic Programming (SQP)-based optimization strategies. The work to be done includes: a) model formulation of cyclic steady state processes that include conservation methods to track wave fronts b) efficient computation of sensitivity information from the PSA model through the exploration of both direct and adjoint methods c) application and refinement of leading edge nonlinear programming algorithms for the reliable and efficient optimization of large-scale systems. The project is GOALI cooperative effort with Air Products and Chemicals.
