A Tabu Search-based algorithm for the integrated process and control system design

The problem of integrated process and control system design is discussed in this paper. We formulate the optimization problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem subject to differential-algebraic constraints. This class of problems is frequently non-convex and local optimization techniques usually fail to locate the global solution. Thus, we propose a global optimization algorithm based on the metaheuristic Tabu Search to solve the challenging problem. The ideas of the methodology are explained and on the basis of two case studies the performance of the approach is evaluated. The first benchmark problem is a Wastewater Treatment Plant model [1] for nitrogen removal and the second case study is the well-known Tennessee Eastman Process [9]. Numerical experiments with our solver indicate that we can achieve an improved performance in both cases. Additionally, our solver outperforms several other solvers which we also used to solve the two case studies.