Reliability of complex chemical engineering processes

•Structural reliability principles are used to enhance chemical process performance.•Processes with known or unknown response functions can be modelled stochastically.•Process response generation is fully automated in the new computational framework.•Any process simulator with support for ActiveX/COM can be used for the analysis.•Validation case studies involved chemical reactions and physical operations.

This paper presents a stochastic performance modelling approach that can be used to optimise design and operational reliability of complex chemical engineering processes. The framework can be applied to processes comprising multiple units, including the cases where closed form process performance functions are unavailable or difficult to derive from first principles, which is often the case in practice. An interface that facilitates automated two-way communication between Matlab® and process simulation environment is used to generate large process responses. The resulting constrained optimisation problem is solved using both Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) and First Order Reliability Method (FORM); providing a wide range of stochastic process performance measures. Adding such capabilities to traditional deterministic process simulators provides a more informed basis for selecting optimum design factors; giving a simple way of enhancing overall process reliability and cost-efficiency. Two case study systems are considered to highlight the applicability and benefits of the approach.