Reduce Distillation Column Cost by Hybrid Particle Swarm and Ant Colony Optimization Technique

Abstract

A novel method for optimum design of plate type distillation column integrating the equilibrium, hydraulic and economic calculations is presented in the present paper. The present study explores the use of non-traditional optimization technique: called hybrid Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and Ant colony optimization (ACO), for design optimization of plate type distillation column from economic point of view. The optimization procedure involves the selection of the major plate geometric parameters such as hole diameters, ratio of downcomer area to tower area, weir height, fractional hole area in tray, tray spacing, tower diameter etc. and minimization of total annual cost is considered as design target subjected to operational constraints like flooding, weeping entrainment, quality specifications etc. The solution space of such type of problem is very complex due to presence of various nonlinear constraints and multiple minima. Hybrid Particle swarm optimization and Ant colony optimization (PSACO) technique is applied to deal with such complexity. The particle swarm optimization applies for global optimization and ant colony approach is employed to update positions of particles to attain rapidly the feasible solution space. Ant colony optimization works as a local search, wherein, ants apply pheromone-guided mechanism to update the positions found by the particles in the earlier stage. The presented hybrid Particle swarm optimization and Ant colony optimization (PSACO) technique is simple in concept, few in parameters and easy for implementations. Furthermore, the PSACO algorithm explores the good quality solutions quickly, giving the designer more degrees of freedom in the final choice with respect to traditional methods. One case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of proposed algorithm. The PSACO approach is able to reduce the total cost of distillation column as compare to cost obtained by commercial simulator.