Oklahoma State University

School of Chemical Engineering

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

2:00 P.M.
ATRC 102
Ramagopal Uppaluri, PhD
Department of Chemical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati
Guwahati, Assam, India
Dr. Uppaluri received his Ph.D. in Process Optimization from the University of Manchester, U. K. (2002), and an
M.Tech. (Chemical Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India (1999). After a brief
post-doctoral research position at Robert Gordon University at Aberdeen, Scotland (2002 2004), Dr. Uppaluri joined
the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati in August 2004. Dr. Uppaluri has diverse interests in several areas
of chemical engineering science and materials research. These include low cost ceramic membranes, dense Pd metal
composite membrane fabrication, microfiltration and ultrafiltration of fruit juices, process optimization, novel
optimization techniques and their engineering applications, petroleum refinery engineering, polymer-natural fiber
Composites, and surfactant enhanced oil recovery. His commitment and professionalism in Chemical Engineering
teaching and research enabled him to become one of the youngest Associate Professors and Professors of IIT Guwahati.

Optimization of Hybrid Multi-stage Flash (MSF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) Processes Using
Differential Evolution Algorithm
The optimization of hybrid MSF-RO processes involves non-linear programming deterministic approaches.
Deterministic non-linear programming formulations often suffer with the assurance of solution quality with respect to
the global optimal domain. Thereby, non-deterministic methods such as genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated
annealing (SA) have gained popularity in recent times. Given the limited investigations carried out to date in the field
of NLP optimization of hybrid MSF-RO processes, the presentation summarizes modeling approaches for the optimal
design of hybrid MSF-RO processes. Twenty alternate MSF-RO processes have been conceptualized for the evaluation
of their global optimality and subsequent ranking to achieve lowest freshwater production cost. Literature process
models have been incorporated to represent MSF and RO performance models and cost functions. Total
annualized freshwater production cost has been considered as the objective function during optimization.
Differential evolution algorithm has been applied in the MATLAB programming environment. Inequality constraints
have been effectively handled using a penalty function approach. For comparative purposes, the results obtained from
the DE based approach have been compared with the MATLAB built-in non-deterministic programming approaches
(Genetic algorithms and Simulated Annealing). Analyzation has shown that novel hybrid MSF-RO process
configurations exist whose optimality is better than those reported in the literature. Further, the MATLAB based GA
and SA optimizers were not effective to achieve feasible solutions (solutions without penalty). Thereby, the efficacy of
DE to effectively tackle relevant higher number of inequality constraints has been proven from the investigations and
case studies which have been carried out. Another important inference of the research is that hybrid MSF-RO
processes do not offer economic competence with respect to the RO processes. These inferences confirm the relevance
of global optimization approaches for desalination process network optimization.

Lecture begins at 2:00 P.M., 102 ATRC

Reception to follow