Modeling and optimization of a rinsing process in a recycled plastic plant

Abstract

A rinsing technology is one of several technologies wildly used in most industrial sectors. The process has been considered as a large amount consumed water process. Therefore, to reduce water consumption, most enterprises have carried out researchers regarding the development of chemical used as well as the design of rinsing processes and equipment. However, the optimization of a rinsing technology has been rarely studied. As a consequence, this work studies the dynamic optimization of a rinsing process in a recycled plastic plant to determine optimal water consumption and volume of drag out involved in the rinsing process. To achieve these, mathematical models of the process have been developed and unkhown and uncertain parameters have been determined based on data obtained from experimental study of a pilot plant. With these models, simulation study has been carried out to find out the dynamic behavior of the process with respect to the concentration of cleaning agent in rinse water, rinse water volume, the amount of drag out etc. Then the dynamic optimization problem has been formulated and solved using written programs based on MATLAB. The results have shown that the optimal water consumption is between 17 and 23 litres and the optimal drag out volume is between 0.6 and 1.2 litres.