Shared resource allocation in the process industries via price-based coordination for systems with discrete decisions

In the process industries, an optimal allocation of the shared resources among different physically coupled subsystems, such as individual production plants within a chemical production site, can significantly contribute to a more resource and energy efficient operation of the overall system. For continuous optimization problems, distributed price based coordination can be applied. In this contribution, we apply the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) to two case studies that involve discrete decisions, load balancing among coupled production units and also the coordination of semi-batch reactors, and study the influence of the discrete variables on the convergence of the coordination scheme.