Computer‐Aided planning of purge operations

Abstract

Abstract A strategy is proposed for synthesizing operating procedures for purging species from chemical processing systems during start‐up. This strategy is based in part on the artificial intelligence methods of planning with constraints and symbolic functional modeling of chemical processing systems. Techniques are introduced for identifying chemical species to be purged, choosing methods and auxiliary fluids for executing purge tasks, and allocating chemical species to their final destinations. The implementation of this strategy is illustrated with the example of purging a hydrocarbon chlorination system during start‐up.