Optimal resource allocation in industrial complexes by distributed optimization and dynamic pricing

Abstract

Abstract:We address the distributed hierarchical optimization of industrial production complexes where the individual plants exchange resources via networks. Due to the site-wide couplings a centralized or a distributed hierarchical optimization is needed to achieve the best overall performance of the site and to balance the networks of the shared resources. We discuss market-like algorithms that set prices of the shared resources in order to influence the individual optimizers so that the overall operation converges to the site-wide optimum. A novel algorithm for price adjustment based on the quadratic approximation of the responses of the individual optimizers is presented. It shows convergence to the site-wide optimum with significantly less iterations in comparison to the standard subgradient-based method for a set of case studies, including a petrochemical complex.

Comparison of dual based optimization methods for distributed trajectory optimization of coupled semi-batch processes

“…There are a variety of other dual based methods. For instance the ones introduced in Maxeiner and Engell (2020) or Wenzel et al (2016), where, similar to the sub-gradient method, only Lagrange multipliers and the usage of the shared resources are exchanged. However, these methods are designed for equality constrained shared resource allocation problems.…”

An optimization model for site-wide scheduling of coupled production plants with an application to the ammonia network of a petrochemical site

“…The optimal management of hydrogen networks in a petrol refinery is described by Sarabia et al (2012). In Wenzel et al (2016) price-based coordination is used to optimally allocate steam on different pressure levels at a petrochemical production site and in Wenzel et al (2017) the work is extended to incorporate the intermediate products ethylene and propylene. The optimization of a utility network combined with the optimization of the hydrogen production is done based upon a MILP formulation by Hwangbo et al (2017).…”

“…Another interesting aspect to study is the extension of the described network by more plants and possibly by connecting it to more shared resource networks such as steam or other base chemicals shared on site. Further, it can be interesting to apply distributed optimization algorithms such as market-based coordination in order to perform the optimization of coupled production plants that belong to different business units or companies that operate at large chemical sites or in industrial clusters as done by Wenzel et al (2016) for coupled continuous plants.…”

“…Looking at the system from a bottom-up perspective leads to the natural choice of starting with the optimization on the plant level. If the focus is widened to the scope of a complete production site and vertically across the different layers of the organization An optimization model for site-wide scheduling of coupled… (Harjunkoski et al 2014), the optimal shared resource allocation within chemical production processes by means of distributed market-based coordination schemes is a way to drive the operation of the individual processing plants to a site-wide optimum (Wenzel et al 2016). Looking at the upstream connections one can optimize the logistic (pipeline) network with the assumption that the processing plants are consumers with fixed inflow rates as Liu et al (2016) propose.…”

Modifier Adaptation for Real-Time Optimization—Methods and Applications

“…The early works on distributed ISOPE methods [7,100,101] point into such a direction. Furthermore, a recent paper by Wenzel et al [102] argues for distributed plant optimization for the sake of confidentiality. In the context of MA, it is interesting to note that different distributed MA algorithms have recently been proposed [103,104].…”