Degree:  Ph.D., Chemical Engineering
Advisor: Christos Georgakis
Research Project:  Operability of Non-Liner High-Dimensional Process

Project Description:

In recent years, chemical processes have increased in complexity due to material and energy conservation requirements, integration of units, process optimization and environmental regulations. A simultaneous approach to process design and control holds the key to ensure that a process design is both optimal and controllable. Integrating process and control design is even more relevant in contemporary chemical engineering practice.

The term operability means the ability of the process to change effectively and quickly form one steady state to another so that a different production rate is achieved or a different product is made, while rejecting process disturbances. Process operability has been successfully applied to linear and non-linear low-dimensional processes, and linear high-dimensional processes. Due to the complexity of industrial process and the significant computational limitation, the operability of nonlinear high-dimensional processes is computationally challenging, but of high industrial interest.

In order to extend the operability framework to nonlinear high-dimensional process, we are developing a general methodology based on design of experiments methods and response surfaces models. This methodology aims to obtain a quantitative insight of the interrelationship between the design and control characteristics of a nonlinear high-dimensional process. As the first step, we start with a single CSTR model which is nonlinear and low-dimensional to gain the initial understanding. The preliminary results prove the good performance of this methodology for the nonlinear low-dimensional process and give us a way to generalize the approach to high-dimensional problems. Besides examining continuous processes, we are also interested in the study of batch processes with application to pharmaceutical manufacturing.
 

Education & Experience:
B.S., Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University, China, 2002
M.S., Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University, China, 2005

Funding:
Tufts University
Petroleum Research Fund

Graduate Students:

Fernando Lima
Foteini Makrydaki
Praveen Prasanna
Lisa Schupmann
Sze Wing Wong