Simultaneous optimization of heat-integrated crude oil distillation systems☆

Crude oil distil ation is important in refining industry. Operating variables of distil ation process have a critical ef-fect on product output value and energy consumption. However, the objectives of minimum energy consumption and maximum product output value do not coordinate with each other and do not lead to the maximum eco-nomic benefit of a refinery. In this paper, a systematic optimization approach is proposed for the maximum an-nual economic benefit of an existing crude oil distil ation system, considering product output value and energy consumption simultaneously. A shortcut model in Aspen Plus is used to describe the crude oil distillation and the pinch analysis is adopted to identify the target of energy recovery. The optimization is a nonlinear program-ming problem and solved by stochastic algorithm of particle warm optimization.