Evolutionary Computation Strategy for Optimization of an Alkylation Reaction

The alkylation process is an important reaction used in refineries to upgrade light olefins and isobutene into a much more highly valued gasoline component. The primary alkylation reaction involves the reaction of isobutene with a light olefin such as butylenes, in the presence of strong acid catalyst to form the high octane. A problem of long standing is to determine the optimal operating conditions for the alkylation process. In order to achieve this, Differential Evolution has been employed. An improved scheme of Genetic Algorithms, Differential Evolution is exceptionally simple, fast and robust. It is primarily a search algorithm that is able to locate near optimal solutions to difficult problems. An analysis of the results obtained on varying the parameters of the problem is also presented.