Synthesis of mechanical driver and power generation configurations,Part 1: Optimization framework

This article presents a novel, systematic, and robust procedure for driver and power plant selection based on mathematical programming. The discrete nature of gas turbines is considered as gas turbine drivers and gas turbine‐based power plants are selected from a group of candidates. Plant availability with considering parallel compression has also been included, which allows a more comprehensive exploitation of the trade‐offs between capital costs, operating costs, and availability. When neglecting process heating and any steam equipment, the formulation can be applied to heavily power dominated processes, such as LNG. However, a more comprehensive formulation, allowing waste heat recovery and the integration with a multilevel steam system, is also proposed to produce more thermally efficient systems. This approach proved to be flexible and robust and is the first in producing solutions ranging from no‐steam to all‐steam systems, including all‐gas turbine, all‐motor and hybrid gas turbine/motor/steam systems. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2010