Overview:
Optimization is widely used in various areas of process systems engineering such as optimal process design and synthesis, control, estimation, and scheduling. While optimization is a vast area with strong ongoing research, this course will focus on the fundamental theory and commonly used algorithms for unconstrained and constrained linear and nonlinear optimization problems. While the course will not be focusing on any specific application for optimization, it will briefly touch base on some common applications.
Goal:
Students will develop a fundamental understanding of optimization- its theory and application to process systems engineering.
Course Objectives:
1. Students will be able to formulate optimization problems proficiently for application in the area of process systems engineering.
2. Students will understand fundamental theories behind constrained and unconstrained optimization of linear and nonlinear, continuous and discrete systems.
3. Students will be able to write simple optimization algorithms using software such as MATLAB.
4. Students will be able to compare performances and applicability of various optimization algorithms for various process systems engineering applications.
Course Objectives:
1. Students will be able to apply knowledge from math, chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, separations, and reaction engineering to complex, open-ended chemical engineering problems such as design, performance, troubleshooting, and debottlenecking.
2. Students will be able to perform an economic analysis on complex chemical processes including features such as the time value of money, profitability, depreciation and tax consequences, and incremental analysis.
3. Students will appreciate the ethical, societal, health, safety, and environmental consequences of their work including sustainability.
4. Students will be able to optimize chemical processes or portions of chemical processes using different objective functions, such as economic and minimum utility consumption.
5. Students will develop their abilities to work individually, in small groups, and in large groups.
6. Students will develop lifelong learning skills such as searching for and finding information, learning material not covered in traditional courses, and making decisions.
7. Students will increase their proficiency in oral and written communication.
Course Objectives:
The objectives of this course are that the students should be able to answer the following questions at the end of the course:
1. Why do you care about process control as a chemical engineer?
2. Why study process dynamics for process control?
3. What are the different tools and ways to model (capture) process dynamics? When and how to apply them?
4. What understanding do we get by studying linear systems of different orders?
5. Time delay systems - why study them? What are their characteristics?
6. What roles the process instrumentation and final control elements play in process control?
7. What are the common control strategies? How do you design the control structures?
8. How are the controllers designed?
9. Why do stability analysis? What are the different methods? How is the stability analysis done?
10. How does the control system work in a real-world control system?