A hierarchical approach for the redesign of chemical processes

An approach to improve the management of complexity during the redesign of technical processes is proposed. The approach consists of two abstract steps. In the first step, model-based reasoning is used to generate automatically alternative representations of an existing process at several levels of abstraction. In the second step, process alternatives are generated through the application of case-based reasoning. The key point of our framework is the modeling approach, which is an extension of the Multimodeling and Multilevel Flow Modeling methodologies. These, together with a systematic design methodology, are used to represent a process hierarchically, thus improving the identification of analogous equipment/sections from different processes. The hierarchical representation results in sets of equipment/sections organized according to their functions and intentions. A case-based reasoning system then retrieves from a library of cases similar equipment/sections to the one selected by the user. The final output is a set of equipment/sections ordered according to their similarity. Human intervention is necessary to adapt the most promising case within the original process.