Optimal operational planning of utility systems in petrochemical plants using an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm

In this paper, the operation optimization problem for utility systems is formulated and a mixed integer linear program (MILP) model is presented. The objective function of the model is to minimize the operational cost of utility systems during the whole operational period. In order to obtain the optimal solution of the foregoing model, an improved particle swarm optimization is proposed. Finally, a case with quantitive results presented is considered for illustrating the advantage of proposed optimization approach. Results show that the new algorithms are much more efficient than some existing particle swarm optimization algorithms.