Coupling multiple water-reuse network designs for agile manufacturing

Water-reuse network design (WRND) is widely studied and employed in many industrial processes to minimize freshwater consumption and wastewater generation. Previous studies have been focusing almost exclusively on identifying one optimal WRND for a studied process system. Actually, the quest for agile manufacturing by some multi-purpose industrial processes needs a comprehensive WRND having the maximum operational flexibility to deal with various production requirements. Thus, the most desirable way for such agile manufacturing is to couple various WRNDs into one super design, and then through an effective control strategy to accomplish different production requests by switching among these WRNDs. In this paper, a novel methodology for the design of such a flexible super WRND has been developed. It simultaneously considers the integration of multiple WRNDs and network control switch based on different manufacturing purposes. The developed systematic methodology is general and thus applicable for many potential network integration problems. Case studies have demonstrated the efficacy of the development and its significance in the context of agile manufacturing.

► Develop a new methodology for integration of multiple water-reuse network designs. ► Increase the structural and operational flexibility for agile manufacturing. ► Theory and algorithm development for the optimal design of valve placement.