Systematic Generation Means-Ends Analysis

Although much (perhaps most) conceptual process design is in fact done by the evolutionary modification of whole or partial existing flowsheets, it is sometimes necessary to generate a flowsheet from scratch. 

In dealing with the manufacture of materials, a number of physical and chemical properties of materials or streams of materials are of particular interest. These properties include the molecular identity of the material the amount involved the composition or purity of the material its thermodynamic phase its 

One complication is that often property-changing operators can only be applied to a stream when certain other properties of the stream are within specified values, which may not be true at the time. For example, a method to select only crystals greater than a given size can be applied only if a stream contains solids. Similarly, a separation method expected to exploit relative volatility differences can be applied only if enthalpy conditions permit simultaneous liquid and vapor phases. If the preconditions for the immediate application of an operator believed to be useful are not met, a new design subproblem may be formulated whose objective is to reduce property differences between the initial stream and the conditions necessary for the application of the operator. This recursive strategy is a common feature of the means-ends analysis paradigm. 

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A different approach to process synthesis is offered by means-ends method. It is based on the observation that the purpose of material processing is to apply various operations in such a sequence that the differences in properties between the raw materials and the products are systematically eliminated. As a result, the raw materials are transformed into the desired products. The means-ends method starts with an initial state and successively applies transformation operators to produce intermediate states with fewer differences until the goal state is reached. The hierarchy for the reduction of property differences is as follows identity, amount, concentration, temperature, pressure, and finally form. This property changing method has its limitations, as it ignores the influences and the impacts on other properties. Moreover, the search method takes an opportrmistic approach, which cannot guarantee the generation of a feasible flowsheet. The means-ends analysis approach has been used as a systematic process synthesis method for overall process flowsheet synthesis, as well as for the more detailed case of a separation system to resolve the concentration differences in nonideal systems that include azeotropes. 

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