Optimization of Process Design Problems Using Differential Evolution Algorithm

A modified differential evolution algorithm (MDE) has been used for solving different process related design problems (namely calculation of the NRTL and Two-Suffix Margules activity coefficient models parameters in 20 ternary extraction systems including different ionic liquids and reactor network design problem). The obtained results, in terms of root mean square deviations (rmsd) for these models are satisfactory, with the overall values of 0.0023 and 0.0170 for 169 tie-lines for NRTL and Two-Suffix Margules models, respectively. The results showed that the MDE algorithm results in better solutions compared to the previous work based on genetic algorithm (GA) for correlating liquid-liquid equilibrium (LLE) data in these systems. MDE also outperformed DE algorithm when tested on reactor network design problem with respect to convergence and speed.