OPTIMIZATION PROBLEM FOR PROPYLENE GLYCOL PRODUCTION

Currently, in the rapid development era of new technologies and in order to increase the economic efficiency of production, more and more attention is paid to the current automation, control, and optimization problems of technological processes in the oil refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries [1-11]. It is known that the production of commercial propylene glycol is one of the most important industries in modern chemical technology. Propylene glycol can act as one of the components in the obtaining drug's process. In addition, it is used for lubrication and preservation of food packaging machines, is used as a plasticizer in the production of cellophane and polyvinyl chloride films, as a solvent for natural and synthetic substances in the preparation of ointments, pastes, creams, shampoos, etc., in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, in the food industry as a solvent for food additives and a tobacco humectant, etc. Based on the relevance of the above, this article, based on a comprehensive study of the features of the chemical-technological process for obtaining propylene glycol, in particular, the chemical reaction of obtaining commercial propylene glycol in one of the main apparatuses for the studied block - the hydrator, a physically substantiated mathematical statement of the optimal control problem of this apparatus is formulated. The optimal control problem of the studied technological apparatus is reduced to obtaining the maximum amount of the target product, considering the restrictions imposed on the control parameters. It is established that by its nature and specificity, it is a nonlinear programming problem, for the solution of which in the presented article an algorithm for optimizing the modes of the technological process is proposed, based on the use of the Lagrange multiplier method. An analysis of the results for solving the optimal control problem of the obtaining propylene glycol process showed that when maintaining the optimal values of the control parameters obtained by us, the amount of propylene glycol obtained increases by 3.5% compared to the actual amount. Keywords: technological process, commercial propylene glycol, optimal control problem, control parameters, Lagrange multiplier method, technological apparatus.