This paper proposes an AI-assisted approach aimed at accelerating chemical process design through causal incremental reinforcement learning (CIRL) where an intelligent agent is interacting iteratively with a process simulation environment (e.g., Aspen HYSYS, DWSIM, etc.). The proposed approach is based on an incremental learnable optimizer capable of guiding multi-objective optimization towards optimal design variable configurations, depending on several factors including the problem complexity, selected RL algorithm and hyperparameters tuning. One advantage of this approach is that the agent-simulator interaction significantly reduces the vast search space of design variables, leading to an accelerated and optimized design process. This is a generic causal approach that enables the exploration of new process configurations and provides actionable insights to designers to improve not only the process design but also the design process across various applications. The approach was valid... [more]

This is the supplementary material for the Foundations of Computer Aided Process Design (FOCAPD 2024) Conference Proceedings: Novel Cost-Efficient Tributyl Citrate Production Process presented in the Systems and Control Transactions series

This is supplemental data for a paper submitted to the PSE 2021+ conference. It includes values used to calculate emissions reductions and financial value of biomass pyrolysis by-product utilization.

This presentation discusses the development and use of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) as cyber-assisted educational tools for instructing and engaging undergraduate chemical engineering students, training graduate students for computational research in science and engineering, and introducing lay audiences to chemical engineering concepts in informal learning environments outside of the classroom. A GUI encapsulates computational software within a visual environment where users can provide interactive input through brief text or point-and-click controls and display query or simulation results through an automated process without needing to learn a programming language or specific commands. MATLAB and Python are two popular software environments for science and engineering used in many university chemical engineering programs worldwide. Both provide excellent user support for rapid development of professional-quality GUIs by engineering educators, academic researchers, and science and... [more]

Simultaneous process optimization and heat integration is essential in the optimal design and operation of process plants with high energy efficiency. This document revisits the pinch location method and updates the compact formulation for simultaneous process optimization with heat integration presented by Anantharaman et al at FOCAPD 2014.