Computing Optimal Operation Schemes for Chemical Plants in Multi-batch Mode

We propose a computer-aided methodology to automatically generate time optimal production schemes for chemical batch plants operating in multi-batch mode. Our approach is based on the following principles: (1) the plant is modeled at the level of process operations whose behavior is specified by timed automata, (2) the optimal production schemes are generated using algorithms for reachability analysis of timed automata implemented in OpenKronos, (3) the output of the verification tool is post-processed to derive high-level control code. We apply our methodology to the batch plant at the University of Dortmund. The automatically computed operation schemes turned out to be more efficient than the previously used handwritten ones.