CBE Seminar - Vasilios Manousiouthakis

Vasilios I. Manousiouthakis

Professor, UCLA Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department

Director, UCLA Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium (HERC)

Infinite DimEnsionAl State-space (IDEAS): A Systematic Process Intensification Tool

Abstract

The academic development of the Chemical Engineering profession was inevitably first focused on Process Analysis. For decades researchers developed first principles based models to capture the behavior of chemical processes. The continuous improvement of computer technology, combined with advances in simulation methods, has enabled the repeated, ad-hoc, use of these process analysis methods in chemical process design. Process Synthesis methods have also slowly begun to appear, though few and far in between (Solvay cluster synthesis, heat integration, mass integration, and others). Optimization formulations, such as nonlinear programs (NLP’s) or mixed integer nonlinear programs (MINLP's), have also been used for flowsheet synthesis. 

Process Intensification has been identified over the last twenty years as a strategy for making dramatic (factor of 100 and 2) reductions in chemical plant size, so as to reach a given production objective. It is often formally defined as any chemical engineering development that leads to a substantially smaller, cleaner, and more energy-efficient technology. The methyl-acetate process of Eastman Chemical Co, is touted as a textbook example of process intensification, in which seven tasks have been integrated into a single piece of equipment. Though the benefits of process intensification abound, systematic tools for the synthesis of intensified process designs are lacking. In fact, there exist practically no tools that can identify fundamental limitations to the level of performance attainable by any particular technology. The aforementioned NLP or MINLP optimization formulations can in principle be employed to this end, as long as their global solution is identified. Unfortunately, most instances of these formulations are non-convex, and cannot be solved globally within realistic timeframes.

The Infinite DimEnsionAl State-space (IDEAS) conceptual framework can serve as a systematic process intensification tool, in that it can identify fundamental limitations to the improvements that can be attained using networks of various technologies, rather than a single technology. IDEAS represents a paradigm shift which establishes that chemical process nonlinearities need not be manifested during flowsheet optimization, but rather can be fully accounted for apriori. The resulting mathematical formulations are infinite dimensional linear programs (ILP's), whose finite dimensional approximations (FLP's) can be solved to global optimality in a timely manner. The power of the IDEAS framework is illustrated on a number of process intensification applications, such as the Attainable Region for general process networks, Azeotropic Distillation, and others.

Bio

Dr. Manousiouthakis received his Diploma, M.S., and Ph.D. degrees all in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (1981) and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1985, 1986) respectively. Dr. Manousiouthakis has over 100 refereed journal publications, 2 patents, numerous conference publications and presentations, and has supervised 16 PhD students, many of which are in academic positions. He has received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (1988), the Northrop Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award (1989) the AIChE Ted Petersen Best Student Paper Award (Co-author 1998, Co-author 2001), a UCLA/AIChE Student Chapter Award (2007), the AIChE Environmental Division Cecil Award (2010), the UCLA/AIChE Student Chapter Professor of the Year Award (2011), he is an AIChE fellow (2012), and has received the AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum Research Excellence In Sustainable Engineering Award (2014). He has been at UCLA since 1985, where he currently holds the rank of Professor. He has served as Department Vice-Chair and Chair, Chair of the UCLA Academic Senate Committee on Committees, Co-Chair of the UCLA Teaching Assessment Committee, Co-Director of the UCLA Process/Control Systems Engineering Consortium, and Director of the UCLA Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium. He is considered the father of mass integration (mass exchange network synthesis) and of the globally optimal process network synthesis conceptual framework termed IDEAS. He is an expert on Green-Engineering/Sustainability, Systems Engineering, and the Hydrogen Economy.