Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209

Enhancing sugar cane process performance through optimal

production scheduling
H. Heluane
a
, M. Colombo
a
, M.R. Hern andez
a
, M. Graells
b
, L. Puigjaner
b,
a
Departamento de Ingeniera Qumica, Universidad Nacional de Tucum an, Av. Independencia 1800, 4000 Tucum an, Argentina
b
Chemical Engineering Department, Universitat Polit` ecnica de Catalunya, ETSEIB, Av. Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Received 4 January 2006; received in revised form 15 May 2006; accepted 15 May 2006
Available online 9 June 2006
Abstract
Process design and operation is concerned with the optimal selection and efcient utilization of resources along time. The operational efciency of
equipment units depends stronglyonthe maintenance policyemployed. This workaddresses critical operational issues inthe sugar cane industrysuch
as the problemof determining the optimal cyclic cleaning policy in the evaporation section and the corresponding optimumsteamconsumption pro-
le of both evaporation and crystallization sections. Amain feature of this problemis the performance decay with time of each evaporation unit which
must be restored by appropriate cleaning operations. in this paper, a detailed mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) performance model
which includes the effect of fouling on the overall heat-transfer coefcient is considered. The problemformulation can also handle multiple-unit par-
allel evaporationlines. Problemsolutionprovides for eachproductionline the optimal cleaningschedule, mass owtobe processed, andvapor bleeds.
2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cyclic production and cleaning scheduling; Evaporation; Continuous process; Sugar manufacturing; Mathematical programming
1. Introduction
In the sugar cane industry, a substantial cost reduction can be
achieved through efcient inventory management, reduction of
the excess manufacturing capacity and rational use of resources.
Important cost reductions can also be achieved by coordinating
the use of the manufacturing resources and process operations.
The key role of effective tools for scheduling and planning
activities within the process industries has gained increasing
recognition in recent years especially because improved cus-
tomer service, reduced inventory, lower manufacturing costs,
and global operations are achieved [1].
Heating processes are commonly employed in chemical
plants in order to achieve product specic properties. In the spe-
cic case of sugar cane production the juice is concentrated in
evaporator units by heating until sucrose crystals are obtained.
In this process, solid deposits are formed on the heating sur-
faces (fouling) with a consequent increase of the heat transfer
resistance with time and a dramatic decrease in the overall per-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 93 401 6678; fax: +34 93 401 0979.
E-mail address: Luis.Puigjaner@upc.edu (L. Puigjaner).
formance of the evaporator. Therefore, additional costs are added
like the increase of operating costs due to a frequent cleaning of
the equipment to restore its original performance.
Fouling affects nearly every plant relying on heat exchangers
for its operation. The common practice to mitigate fouling is
to implement cleaning-in-place (CIP) operations. This is espe-
cially applicable to processes affected by rapid fouling, such as
that occurring in the production of milk, sugar cane juice, lemon
juice, etc. [2]. During evaporator operation, as a consequence of
the formation of solid deposits on heating surfaces, evapora-
tion rates decrease with time whenever the driving force is kept
constant. Consequently, the evaporator must be shutdown to be
cleaned and the cycle must be restarted.
Several works have proposed methods for the optimization of
cleaning schedules for a single heat exchanger [35]. However,
in process plants, multiple interconnected heat transfer units are
used and the operating conditions of each equipment affect the
overall heat exchange performance. Therefore, a rational main-
tenance policy must be applied to the heat exchangers network in
order to accomplish the desired production at a minimum cost.
Schedulingof process operations has beenaddressedbymany
authors for different scenarios with special emphasis in batch
process applications. But less attention has been paid to the
0255-2701/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cep.2006.05.015
H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209 199
scheduling of continuous processes [68]. Jain and Grossmann
[9] studied the scheduling of multiple feeds on parallel units
and developed a mixed integer nonlinear programming model
(MINLP). Georgiadis and Papageorgiou [2] considered a cyclic
cleaning scheduling on heat exchanger networks and proposed
a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP). Alle et al.
[10] addressed the cyclic scheduling of cleaning and produc-
tion operations in continuous plants. In all cases performance
decay with time was considered, but the additional complex-
ity of multiple-unit parallel evaporation lines in the sugar cane
industry has not been contemplated yet.
Otherwise, a wide range of chemical engineering prob-
lems can be framed as mixed integer nonlinear programming
(MINLP) like process synthesis problems (e.g., heat recovery
networks, separation systems, reactor networks) and process
operations problems (e.g., scheduling and design of batch pro-
cesses) [912].
The objective of this work is to address the scheduling of
production and cleaning operations in a sugar plant with perfor-
mance decay. A detailed mixed integer nonlinear programming
(MINLP) model including the effect of fouling on the overall
heat-transfer coefcient is presented. Multiple-unit parallel lines
are modeled for the evaporation section. The cyclic nature of
the cleaning operations is also taken into account. The objective
function to be minimized considers the costs of the evapora-
tion and the crystallization sections and other facilities (i.e. heat
exchangers) that require vapor (or eventually steam) to oper-
ate. The problem solution provides the following information:
the cleaning (maintenance) frequency, the mass ow to be pro-
cessed by each line, vapor bleed as energy source for external
heat requirements and the starting time (scheduling) for each
cleaning (maintenance) task in each line.
1.1. Problem statement
The evaporation and crystallization sections of the typical
sugar cane plant consideredinthis workare shownschematically
in Fig. 1.
As seen in Fig. 1, the evaporation system, the crystalliza-
tion stage and other operations (i.e. heat exchangers) are steam
consumers. Heat exchangers are used for pre-heating the juice
before being fed to the rst unit of the evaporation line. The
so called other operations can be operated with either vapor
generated at the evaporation and/or steam depending on plant
availability.
This paper seeks enhanced process integration in sugar plants
by considering the simultaneous roles of the evaporation and
crystallization sections as material processors as well as energy
suppliers.
In particular, the objective of this work is to determine the
optimal production schedule that minimizes the plant cost asso-
ciated to cleaning and steam consumed by the evaporation and
crystallization sections, and by other steam-consuming opera-
tions (other operations).
The problem can be formally stated as follows:
given:
(i) the amount of material to be processed during a certain
time period
(ii) the equipment models, parameters and initial status
(iii) the individual equipment performance as a time function
(iv) product (sugar) concentration
(v) other steam related requirements (other operations heat
requirements)
determine:
(i) the cleaning (maintenance) frequency
(ii) the mass ow to be processed by each line
(iii) starting time for each cleaning (maintenance) task
(iv) ows of vapor extracted fromthe evaporation (bleeds).
1.2. Cost considerations
As explained by Heluane et al. [13], the aim of evaporation
and crystallization processes at a sugar factory is to eliminate
water from the juice and, thus, to obtain crystals of sucrose.
The evaporation process is economically more effective than
the crystallization process due to the multiple-effect scheme
employed (several evaporators working in series). In multiple-
effect evaporation with I units, the water extracted fromthe juice
is approximately I times the steam used in the process. Other-
wise, at the crystallization stage the water is extracted roughly
in a proportion 1:1 with the consumed steam. Therefore, the
objective function (to be minimized) has to take into account
not only the additional cost due to the evaporator fouling, but
Fig. 1. Use of steam and extracted vapor for the system studied.
200 H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209
also the crystallization cost, a necessary although economically
less efcient operation. So it is important to consider the neces-
sary trade-off between evaporation and crystallization sections
in the overall cost study.
The evaporation process leads to the formation of fouling
on the inner surface of the evaporator tubes. The rate of
fouling formation is dependent on the nature of the feed, and
is particularly signicant for the case of liquid feeds. Fouling
deposits inside the tubes act as insulation thus causing higher
heat-transfer resistance. It is convenient to clean the equipment
periodically in order to restore conditions of high heat-transfer
rate. If a high concentration of the product is desired, then
the evaporators have to be cleaned frequently which would
increase costs. Thus, there is also a compromise between juice
concentration and cleaning costs.
Special consideration must be given to the vapor produced
by an evaporation unit, which is mainly used for two purposes
(a) vapor source for the following evaporator unit, and
(b) vapor source for heating purposes other than the evaporation
units. This vapor is named as bleed in the sugar industry.
If the bleed is not enough to meet heating targets then more
steam must be generated at the boiler with the consequent
increase of operating costs. Usually, vapor produced by the
last units of evaporation lines and the vapor produced at the
crystallization stage are not used as energy source but they are
condensed in the so called barometric condenser to maintain
appropriate vacuum conditions in the system.
Hence, total operating cost can be expressed as
C = C
evaporator cleaning
+C
steam evaporation
+C
steam crystallization
+C
steam other operations
(1)
2. Mathematical formulation
2.1. Objective function
The objective is to minimize the steamcost at the evaporation
and crystallization sections as well as in other operations, i.e.
heat exchangers, and the evaporator cleaning costs. Eq. (1) will
be used as objective function.
2.2. Model assumptions
The following assumptions have been considered to formu-
late the model presented in this work:
i. Negligible sensitive heat and boiling point increase at the
evaporator units.
ii. No sugar loss during juice processing.
iii. Constant fouling factor during evaporation.
iv. Fixed operating conditions for the equipment units.
2.3. Fouling model for evaporation units
In order to calculate the global heat-transfer coefcient, an
empirical expression that depends on juice temperature () and
juice concentration (x) is used [14]. This expression is frequently
used in sugar industry calculations within the typical range of
temperature andjuice concentrationandis knownas the Swedish
formula
U =

x
(2)
where is a proportionality constant.
During evaporator operation, and as a consequence of foul-
ing, global heat transfer coefcient gradually decreases with
time. In order to handle this situation, time dependence of U
must be taken into account in Eq. (2). The model that better
describes the decreasing behavior of U is given by the follow-
ing expression, which was determined tting several models to
experimental data from a local sugar plant
U =

x(1 +bt)
1/2
(3)
The temperature () of the boiling juice inside the evaporator
is a parameter of the problemand is usually maintained constant
during equipment operation. In Eq. (3) juice concentration (x)
must be expressed as Brix (Bx) dened as grams of solids per
100 g of water.
As sugar mass remains constant at every evaporator (no sugar
loss), the outlet juice concentration for unit j can be obtained
from the mass balance under a pseudo steady state condition
(see Fig. 2)
x
j
= x
j1
+
x
j1
V
j
F
j
(4)
If sensible-heat is neglected fromthe evaporator energy balance,
Eq. (5) is obtained

j
V
j
= U
j
A
j

j
(5)
For a given operating time t, by substituting U from Eq. (3) and
V
j
from Eq. (5) into Eq. (4) the following expression for the
outlet juice concentration from unit j is derived
x
j
= x
j1
+

j
A
j

j
F
j1
(1 +b
j
t)
1/2
= x
j1
+

j
F
j1
(1 +b
j
t)
1/2
(6)
Fig. 2. Scheme of two evaporation units working in series.
H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209 201
Fig. 3. Scheme of multiple-effect evaporation line i and the following crystallization stage.
For sake of simplicity, a newvariable
j
is introduced, as follows

j
=

j
A
j

j
(7)
By operating with sugar mass balance for unit j and x
j
given
by Eq. (6), the following expression is derived for the outlet
concentration of the juice leaving unit M at operating time t:
x
M
= x
0
M

j=1
_
1 +

j
F
0
x
0
(1 +b
j
t)
1/2
_
(8)
where F
0
and x
0
are the mass ow and concentration, respec-
tively of the juice fed to the evaporation system.
2.4. Steam for the evaporation section
As seen in Fig. 3, for each evaporation line i steamis fed only
to the rst unit (j =1) while for the j following units the energy
is provided by the vapor produced at the previous one, j 1.
Under the hypothesis mentioned above, the total steam, SE,
required for the evaporation systemwith Nlines for an operating
time t
i
is given by Eq. (9)
SE =
N

i=1
se
i
=
N

i=1
V
i1
t
i
(9)
By substituting the corresponding conservation balances for the
rst evaporation unit of a line i in Eq. (9), the steam required by
the whole evaporation stage can be expressed as
SE =
N

i=1
F
i0
_
1
x
i0
x
i1
_
t
i
(10)
where F
i0
is the ow with a concentration x
i0
fed to the rst unit
of line i and x
i1
is the average concentration of the ow leaving
the unit.
2.5. Steam for the crystallization section
Under the hypothesis mentioned above, the total steam
required for the crystallization section is given by Eq. (11)
SC =
N

i=1
sc
i
=
N

i=1
VC
i
t
i
(11)
By substituting the mass balances for crystallization and evap-
oration sections in Eq. (11), the steam required for the crystal-
lization stage for N lines can be expressed as
SC =
N

i=1
F
i0
x
i0
_
x
T
x
i
x
T
x
i
_
t
i
(12)
where x
i
is the average concentration of the juice leaving unit
M for a line i.
Eq. (8) can be adapted to express the concentration of the
outlet ow of an evaporation line i with M
i
units as follows:
x
i
= x
i0
M
i

j=1
_
1 +

ij
F
i0
x
i0
(1 +b
ij
t
i
)
1/2
_
(13)
Sugar concentration of the juice leaving the evaporator decays
with time due to the fouling of the heat-exchange surface. Hence,
the average concentration of the concentrated juice is given by
x
i
=
_
t
2
t
1
x
i
dt
t
2
t
1
(14)
Note that for calculating the average concentration of the con-
centrated juice when the evaporation line starts operating clean
(maximum heat exchange capacity) t
1
=0.
2.6. Steam requirements for other operations
Many heating operations are met by making use of the vapor
produced by the evaporators. As different vapors have differ-
202 H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209
ent temperature levels, those vapors are selectively used (i.e.
vapors from rst units are used exclusively as heating supply
for requirement E
1
). All vapors except those from the last unit
may be used for heating operations. Last unit vapors are sent to
a barometric condenser to assure vacuum conditions in the units
of the line (see Fig. 3). When vapor is not enough as heating
supply, steam is used.
Let us assume that E
j
is the energy demand during the operat-
ing time of line i, t
i
, by operations classied as other operations
that can be supplied with vapor fromthermal level j. This is total
vapor produced by the units in the jth position in each line. Thus
E
j
=
N

i=1

ij
VB
ij
t
i
+
s
sr
j
(15)
where VB
ij
represents the ow of vapor (bleed) extracted from
the evaporator j on line i,
s
is the heat of vaporization of steam
and sr
j
is the amount of steam used when vapor from units j is
not enough to supply energy demand. Due to temperature levels,
when vapor is used, only that from unit j can be used to supply
E
j
requirements.
Hence, steam requirements can be obtained from Eq. (15)
sr
j
=
E
j

i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
, j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1 (16)
when
N

i=1

ij
VB
ij
t
i
E
j
(17)
sr
j
must be set equal to zero because bleed is enough to supply
other heating requirements.
Therefore, for a certain operation time t
i
, the total steam
consumption (sr) for other operations in a systemwith Nevap-
oration lines will be expressed as
sr

0 if
N

i=1

ij
VB
ij
t
i
E
j
, j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1
M1

j=1
sr
j
=
M1

j=1
_
E
j

i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
_
otherwise
(18)
2.7. Cleaning costs
Evaporators are cleaned by line, thus, all evaporators belong-
ing to a certain line are stopped at the same time and cleaning
operations are performed. For a certain time period the clean-
ing costs (C
c
) for N evaporation lines can be calculated as
follows:
C
c
= c
c
N

i=1
n
i
(19)
where c
c
is the cost of cleaning one evaporation line; n
i
the
number the of cleanings of a line i during a certain period.
2.8. Cycle
The cyclic nature of the scheduling may be taken into account
by the mathematical model. The model allows determining the
operation schedule for one cycle of T
C
hours [9]. This cycle can
be repeated until the desired production level is achieved. If H
is the time horizon, then the number of evaporation cycles can
be calculated by the following equation:
=
H
T
C
(20)
The steam consumed during a time horizon H will be
steam =
_
N

i=1
V
i1
+
N

i=1
VC
i
_
t
i
+SR (21)
where
SR

0 if
N

i=1

ij
VB
ij
t
i
E
H
j
, j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1
M1

j=1
SR
j
=
M1

j=1
_
E
H
j

i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
_
otherwise
(22)
E
H
j
is the energy demand (obtained from vapor from units j
and/or steam) for the time horizon H.
Therefore the objective function can be expressed as follows:
min FO = c
su
_

_
N

i=1
V
i1
+
N

i=1
VC
i
_
t
i
+
M1

j=1

j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
)

+c
c

i=1
N
i
(23)
with

j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
) = max
_
0,
E
H
j

i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
_
,
j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1 (24)
H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209 203
The equivalent mathematical representation of Eq. (24) is the
following:
LO
1
(1 z
j
)
E
H
j

i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
UP
1
z
j
,
j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1 (25)
0
j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
)
_
E
H
j

i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
_
UP
2
(1 z
j
), j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1 (26)
0
j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
) UP
3
z
j
, j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1 (27)
where LO
1
, UP
1
are lower and upper bounds on
E
H
j

N
i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
, where j =1, 2, . . ., M1, respectively. UP
2
is
upper bound on
j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
)
_
E
H
j

N
i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
_
,
where j =1, 2, . . ., M1. UP
3
is upper bound on
j
(T
C
, VB
ij
,
t
i
) j =1, 2, . . ., M1. z
j
is a binary variable. If z
j
=1 then,

j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
) =
_
E
j

N
i=1

ij

s
VB
ij
t
i
_
, and if z
j
=0 then

j
(T
C
, VB
ij
, t
i
) =0.
2.9. Integrality constraints for the number of subcycles
Each evaporation line may be cleaned many times during one
cycle time (T
C
). This fact determines subcycles (N
i
) for each
line
N
i
=
K

k=1
ky
ik
, i (28)
K

k=1
y
ik
= 1, i (29)
If the number of subcycles for evaporation line i is k then the
binary variable y
ik
is one. Note that for any evaporation line
the number of subcycles will be at least one, therefore all the
evaporators will operate during the cycle time.
2.10. Last evaporation unit outlet ow concentration
Given the operation time for each subcycle (t
i
/N
i
) Eq. (14)
needs to be solved for each particular case (the set M
i
) for obtain-
ing outlet juice average concentration
x
i
=
x
0
t
_
t
2
t
1
M

j=1

1 +

j
F
0
x
0
_
1 +b
j
t
i
N
i
_
1/2

(30)
2.11. Mass balance
For a system of N lines, the total mass ow of juice
(F) fed to the evaporation system must be processed in the
evaporators
FT
c
=
N

i=1
F
i0
t
i
(31)
Mass and energy balances for each unit can be expressed by the
following equations:
x
ij
= x
ij1
+
_
2
ij
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
1/2
1
_
bF
ij1
t
i
N
i
, i, j (32)
V
ij
= F
ij1
_
1
x
ij1
x
ij
_
, i, j (33)
F
ij
= F
ij1
V
ij
, i, j (34)
If a unit does not exist for an evaporator system
ij
will be zero
(see Eq. (7)). On the other hand, when
ij
is not zero an amount
of vapor is generated in unit (i, j) and is available to be used at
the next unit of the line. Therefore
If
ij
= 0 then VP
ij
= V
ij+1
, i, j = 1, 2, . . . , M 1
(35)
The bleed can be calculated as follows:
VB
ij
= V
ij
VP
ij
, i, j (36)
If for a given unit (i, j) no bleed is required, VB
ij
will be
equal to zero for that unit. An additional constant is used B
ij
.This
constant takes the value 1 when the unit has a bleed, otherwise
the constants value is 0
If B
ij
= 0 then VB
ij
= 0, i, j (37)
2.12. Storage tank
The implementation of the results of this model will require
a storage tank because the inlet ows (F
i0
) to the evaporation
system remain constant during T
C
(operation +cleaning times).
Therefore, when line i is shut down to be cleaned, the corre-
sponding F
i0
is diverted to a storage tank until the operation of
the evaporation line i is re-established. As operating times are
longer thancleaningtimes, it is possible toimplement a sequence
of cleaning in such a way that no overlapping of cleaning oper-
ations occurs. Hence, the minimum desirable tank volume is
given by the following equation:
vol = max
i

l=i
F
l0

(38)
204 H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209
2.13. Processing and cleaning time
The total time (operating and cleaning time) for line i is given
by the following equations:
t
tot
i
= N
i

i
+t
i
, i (39)
T
C
= N
i

i
+t
i
+sl
i
, i (40)
sl
i
UPy
sl
i
0, i (41)
N

i=1
(1 y
sl
i
) 1 (42)
The above constraints ensure that Eq. (39) will accomplish for
at least one line.
Being L a number large enough, the following constraints
ensure that the processing time for every line is longer than the
cleaning time
t
i
L
i
N
i
, i (43)
2.14. Bounds
N
i
1, i; F
i0
> 0, i; T
c
> 0;
y
ik
{0, 1}, i, k; y
sl
i
{0, 1}, i; z
j
{0, 1}, j
(44)
The MINLP model has Eq. (23) as objective function and the
above constraints.
The formulation is exible enough to model multiple unit M
units) and parallel Nlines) evaporator systems. It can also model
situations where extractionof vapor (bleed) fromthe evaporation
units is needed to supply other operations.
2.15. Case study I
The following example is based on a sugar plant located in
Tucum an, Argentina. Five parallel evaporation lines are consid-
ered and each line is a quintuple effect system. Concentration
of the juice leaving evaporation line i will be expressed by Eq.
(45) which was obtained by integrating Eq. (13) with time for a
line with ve evaporation units and assuming identical fouling
coefcient (b) for all evaporators
x
i
= x
i0
+
2
b
_
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
1/2
1
_
t
i
N
i

M
i
j=1

ij
F
i0
+
ln
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
t
i
N
i

M
i
j=1

r>j
(
ij

ir
)
bF
2
i0
x
i0
+
2
b
_
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
1/2
1
_
t
i
N
i
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
1/2

M
i
j=1

r>j

s>r
(
ij

ir

is
)
F
3
i0
x
2
i0
+

M
i
j=1

r>j

s>r

t>s
(
ij

ir

is

it
)
F
4
i0
x
3
i0
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
+
2
3b

M
i
j=1

j
F
5
i0
x
4
i0
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
3/2
1
_
1 +b
t
i
N
i
_
3/2
(45)
For this particular case also the operating time is imposed to be
at least six times the cleaning time of each line
t
i
6
i
N
i
, i (46)
It is desired to determine a conguration and cycle schedule
to process 800 t/h of 16 Bx juice. The nal concentration of the
sugar (x
T
) must be 99 Bx. As vapors extracted from units 1, 2,
3, and 4 have different enthalpy conditions, they will be used
at different stages of the process. The energy demand of each
type of vapor (E
H
j
) is 42,200 MWh for a time horizon (h) of
720 h. If any vapor is not enough to meet the requirements, steam
will be used. Cost of cleaning one evaporation line (c
c
) was
assumed $4500 and steam cost per mass unit (c
su
) 8.386 $/t.
Some parameters of the problem are shown in Table 1.
The case was implemented in GAMS [15] using DICOPT++
as a solver. The results are given in Tables 2 and 3.
The optimal value obtained for the objective function is
$4,076,400 for the time horizon and the cycle time is 154 h.
Table 1
Parameters of the problem case study I
Line
i1

i2

i3

i4

i5

i
(h) b
1 1025 770 621 503 450 18 0.01
2 649 550 449 349 343 16 0.01
3 848 688 602 517 386 18 0.01
4 977 843 749 667 550 16 0.01
5 908 721 645 531 458 19 0.01
Table 2
Results of the case study I
Line t
i
(h) F
i0
(t/h) N
i
x
i
(Bx) SR
j
(t) F
Pi
(t/h)
1 136 189 1 35.7 32634 84.6
2 138 150 1 32.6 48424 73.7
3 136 172 1 35.6 53653 77.2
4 138 209 1 36.2 58804 92.3
5 135 182 1 36.0 0 80.7
Table 3
Bleed (t/h) from the units for case study I
Line Evaporator units
1 2 3 4 5
1 14.2 7.6 4.9 2.5 0
2 7.4 5.4 4.0 1.1 0
3 10.9 5.8 4.2 4.2 0
4 10.9 6.9 4.9 4.4 0
5 12.1 5.7 5.0 3.0 0
Nos. 15 refers to lines.
H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209 205
Fig. 4. Gantt chart of the optimal cleaning time distribution.
Cleaning cost is $105,194. As seen from Table 2 the amount of
vapor generated in the evaporation stage is not enough to supply
other energy requirements (SR
1
, SR
2
, SR
3
and SR
4
>0).
The cleaning policy showed in Fig. 4 will be adopted in order
to avoid the following inconveniences:
1. Under-utilization of cleaning resources, in particular man-
power.
2. The superposition of the cleaning times at the end of the
schedule yields a great mass accumulation that would require
storage until the beginning of a new cycle.
This sequence allows using the same manpower for cleaning
operation and, on the other hand, avoids the storage of juice for
a long time that would cause a decrease in sugar yield.
2.16. Storage requirements
The Gantt chart shown in Fig. 4 presents 10 time intervals
where the variations of total processed mass ow are due to
the cleaning policy and different feed conditions. If the pro-
cessed ows are analyzed at each interval, two situations are
observed. When one line is being cleaned, the mass ow arriv-
ing to the evaporation section exceeds the ow being processed,
and when the ve lines are operating simultaneously the oppo-
site occurs. Therefore, it is necessary to contemplate the storage
of juice so that the evaporation section could be operated contin-
uously (which is not explicitly taken into account in the MINLP
model).
As shown in Fig. 5, the accumulation of juice is 13,742 m
3
per each cycle when all units are stopped and cleaned at the same
time.
When the cleaning task for a unit starts immediately after
the previous one is nished, the volume of juice accumulated is
6840 m
3
(see Fig. 5). In the situation shown in Fig. 4, the juice
is accumulated while one line is being cleaned and immediately
used in the next time interval where the ve lines are work-
ing together. In that case, the storage requirement is reduced
Fig. 5. Storage of juice per cycle for different situations.
to 1716 m
3
as shown in Fig. 5. Any storage tank of a volume
of 1716 m
3
or higher will allow the operation of the proposed
optimum scheduling but higher storage capacities gives more
operational exibility.
Fig. 6 shows the variation of the value of the optimum (mini-
mal) costs dened by Eq. (1) with storage tank volume available
for that purpose at the plant.
2.17. Case study II
The same problem was considered when no tank is avail-
able (zero storage). Then, the Gantt chart shown in Fig. 7 is
obtained. The optimal value obtained for the objective function
is $4,185,186, a cycle time of 95 h, and ows fed to the evapo-
ration lines of 200 t/h.
2.18. Computational statistics
The GAMS modeling system was used to implement the
mathematical model as mentioned above. The NLP subproblem
was solved using Minos5.
The resulting MINLP for the case study had 60 binary vari-
ables, 227 continuous variables and 263 equations. The solution
was obtained in 0.70 CPU seconds on a Pentium I.
Fig. 6. Variation of total operation cost with available storage tank volume.
206 H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209
Fig. 7. Gantt chart with zero storage.
The sensitivity of the solution to the initial point provided to
the solver is shown in Fig. 8. A sample of 96 points was cho-
sen at random. The minimum value obtained was $4,076,400
(solution of the problem) and the maximum was $4,120,600
(range: $44,200). Only 22.9% of the initial points led to the
minimum cost value but for the rest of the initial points, costs
were below 1% of difference from the minimum cost value
($4,076,400) although the schedules were different. This gives
a remarkable exibility because the system can be operated
with different cleaning schedules and costs remain practically
constant.
2.19. Case study III
Case study III has the same parameters than case study I, the
difference between them is the evaporator scheme. The evap-
oration system was considered as follows: ve parallel lines,
three of them with quintuple units, one with quadruple units and
another one with 3 units. Values of
ij
are the same as in case
study I except
15
=0,
54
=0, and
55
=0. Therefore, line 1 is
a quadruple unit line while line 5 is a triple unit line. The opti-
mal value for the objective function is $4,295,100. The lack of
three units in the new evaporation system causes an increase of
water to be extracted at the crystallization section and hence an
increase of costs.
Fig. 8. Sensitivity of the solution to the initial point.
2.20. Heuristic case
For comparison purposes, a heuristics based case study is
used to schedule the ve lines. A 7-day cycle is considered.
During the rst 87 h of the cycle (time devoted to cleaning
sequentially every line) each operating line is fed at a rate of
200 t/h of juice. At the following period (87168 h), all lines are
fairly clean and operate with the same mass ow of 160 t/h. The
cost calculated in this case was $4.618E+6 which imply savings
of $542,000 for the time horizon of 720 h.
2.21. Sensitivity analysis
The inuence of the different parameters and variables on
the objective function, once the optimum has been achieved,
was determined.
The relative inuence of the main parameters of the evapora-
tor model such as cleaning costs per unit, steam costs per mass
unit, body temperature, driving force, area, fouling factor, inlet
juice concentration, and nal sugar concentration on the objec-
tive function has been studied and the corresponding results for
the case study are shown in Fig. 9.
The parameter used for such purposes is S
p
dened according
to
S
p
=
Z
p
p
Z
(47)
The inuence of A, and is the same, in agreement with
Eq. (7). It should be also noted that even when the inuence of
inlet juice concentration and sugar concentration are signicant,
their values could be obtained with relative accuracy from plant
information. More signicant is the relatively small dependence
Fig. 9. Sensitivity to parameters of the model.
H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209 207
Fig. 10. Sensitivity to an increase of 10% in variable values.
on b, which is usually the most uncertain parameter. Otherwise,
the model had shown a strong inuence of steam cost per mass
unit, which is another uncertain parameter.
In order to reect the loss of performance when an optimal
operating condition cannot be implemented, the sensitivity due
to the decision variables, S
v
, has been calculated according to
S
v
=
Z
v
v
Z
(48)
where v has been set to 10%.
According to Fig. 10 (v = +10%), the objective function
shows to be especially sensitive to the cycle time T
c
) and the
ows for every evaporator (F
i0
). A similar result is obtained for
(v = 10%).
2.22. Technical objective function
If cleaning costs are neglected, minimum costs are obtained
maximizing the outlet juice concentration at the evaporation
stage [13]. Therefore, a newMINLP problemwas solved. In this
case the constraints were maintained but the following equation
was considered as objective function:
max x
T
=

N
i=1
F
i0
t
i

N
i=1
F
i0
t
i
xe
i
(49)
where x
T
is the average outlet juice concentration of all evapo-
ration lines.
2.23. Case study IV
The same parameters as in case study I were used. The opti-
mal value obtained for the objective function is 35.6 Bx. The cal-
culated costs using optimum values obtained from the problem
solved with the technical objective function has no signicant
difference with the cost obtained with Eq. (23) as objective func-
tion. Table 4 shows the results obtained for the different cases
studied. The optimization of a technical objective function with
economical background is useful in cases where uncertain cost
parameters are involved. For instance, in this work, accurate val-
ues of cleaning and steam costs may be difcult to determine,
Table 4
Results of the optimization studies
Variable Case study Heuristic
I II III IV
t
1
(h) 136 77 135 99 150
t
2
(h) 138 79 137 101 152
t
3
(h) 136 77 135 99 150
t
4
(h) 138 71 137 101 152
t
5
(h) 135 76 134 98 149
F
1
(t/h) 189 200 176 198 200/160
F
2
(t/h) 150 200 150 150 200/160
F
3
(t/h) 172 200 192 178 200/160
F
4
(t/h) 209 200 233 221 200/160
F
5
(t/h) 182 200 150 192 200/160
x
1
(Bx) 35.7 36.5 33.5 35.9 36.9
x
2
(Bx) 32.6 28.8 32.6 33.7 28.9
x
3
(Bx) 35.6 33.9 32.9 35.9 34.0
x
4
(Bx) 36.2 40.5 33.5 36.0 39.9
x
5
(Bx) 36.0 35.7 31.1 35.9 35.5
F
P1
(t/h) 84.6 87.6 84.0 88.0
F
P2
(t/h) 73.7 111.1 73.7 71.3
F
P3
(t/h) 77.2 94.2 93.3 79.4
F
P4
(t/h) 92.3 78.9 111.6 98.4
F
P5
(t/h) 80.7 89.5 77.0 85.3
C ($) 4.07E6 4.18E6 4.29E6 4.09E6 4.62E6
C (%) 0 2.7 5.4 0.49 13.5
hence, to nd an alternative objective function is a valuable tool
for process optimization.
3. Conclusions
Efcient process integration in sugar cane plants and
enhanced operation performance may be achieved by consider-
ingthe combinedoperationof the evaporationandcrystallization
sections, along with the appropriate management of their asso-
ciated steam bleeds for satisfying energy demands from other
plant operations. Acommon cost objective allows formulating a
problemfor determining the optimal operating conditions under
different scenarios.
Aimed at a practical application of the results this work seeks
to evaluate different operating conditions of multiple evapo-
ration systems working in parallel in order to choose those
conditions leading to minimum operating costs.
A MINLP model was developed to determine an optimal
schedule for the evaporator system. The formulation is exible
enough to model multiple units (M units) and parallel (N lines)
evaporator systems, as well as network arrangements arising
fromthe combination of these basic cases. The formulation may
also consider bleed at any unit. Results show that signicant
savings of steam could be achieved just operating the evapora-
tion section in a different way and with no additional investment
needed.
Although the solution of the MINLP model is sensitive to
the initial point, most of the times, costs were only about 1%
higher than minimum cost (optimal solution). This situation is
remarkable because it gives operational exibility because the
208 H. Heluane et al. / Chemical Engineering and Processing 46 (2007) 198209
evaporation system may be operated with different schedules
without sensible cost increase.
Identical costs were determined with an alternative technical
objective function which is convenient because the objective
function based on costs is very sensitive to a parameter (steam
cost per unit mass) that has a fairly uncertain value.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by Consejo de Investi-
gaciones de la Universidad Nacional de Tucum an (Argentina).
Support receivedbythe EuropeanCommissionis alsothankfully
acknowledged (Project no. MRTN-CT-2004-512233).
Appendix A. Nomenclature
A heat-exchange area (m
2
)
b Fouling coefcient for the evaporator
B
ij
bleed constant
c
c
cost of cleaning one evaporation unit ($/unit)
c
su
cost of steam per mass unit ($/t)
C total cost ($)
C
cleaning
costs of the cleaning operation ($)
C
steam crystallization
cost of steam of the crystallization section
($)
C
steam evaporation
cost of steam of the evaporation section ($)
C
steam other uses
cost of steamused as supply for other operations
of the process ($)
E energy required for other operations (MWh)
F total mass ow of fed juice (t/h)
F
i0
mass ow of juice fed to line i (t/h)
F
Pi
juice ow leaving evaporation line i (t/h)
H time horizon (h)
K maximum expected number of cleaning tasks during
T
c
N
i
number of subcycles in line i
RQ mass of vapor and/or steam required for other opera-
tions (t/h)
sc
i
steam condensed at the crystallizer in the line i (t/h)
se
i
steam condensed in the rst evaporator of each line i
(t/h)
sl slack variable
sr
t
steam required for other operations of the process for t
(t/h)
S
p
sensitivity to parameters
S
v
sensitivity to variables
SC total steamcondensed at the crystallization section (t/h)
SE total steam condensed at the evaporation section (t/h)
SR
H
steam required for other operations of the process for
H (t/h)
t
i
total operation time of line i (h)
t
tot
i
processing and cleaning time of line i in T
c
(h)
T
C
cycle time (h)
U global heat-transfer coefcient (kW/m
2
C)
UP upper bound
vol storage tank volume (m
3
)
V total water removed as vapor from an evaporator (t/h)
VB vapor removed as bleed (t/h)
VC water removed as vapor from crystallization section
(t/h)
VP vapor removed from an evaporator and derived to the
following one (t/h)
x
ij
outlet juice concentration at evaporation unit (i, j) (Bx)
x
i0
inlet juice concentration at evaporation unit j =1 (Bx)
x
T
sugar concentration of the product obtained at the crys-
tallization section (Bx)
x
0
concentration of the juice fed to an evaporator (Bx)
x
i
average concentration of the concentrated juice at evap-
oration line i (Bx)
X average sugar concentration obtained at evaporator
(Bx)
y
ik
binary variable (y
i,k
=1 if unit i operates k subcycles in
T
c
)
y
sl
i
, z
j
binary variable
Indices
i evaporation line
j evaporation unit
Greek letters
proportionality constant (kWBx/(m
2
C
2
))
number of evaporation cycles in the time horizon
juice temperature in the evaporator (

C)
driving force (

C)
heat of vaporization of water (kWh/t)

i
time devoted to clean line i (h)
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