ABSTRACT

Simulated Moving Bed Chromatography (SMBC) has emerged as a significant separation technology in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industries. The SMB operating parameters are chosen to satisfy various performance objectives such as maximization of purity or productivity and the choice of the objective is generally guided by process economics. For a given mixture, the optimal values of these objectives strongly depend on the system design and any further enhancement would require a redesign such as increasing the length or the number of columns. The talk will focus on two optimization-driven enhancements in operation of SMBC: (1) a novel dual switching operating strategy, and (2) optimal transitions. The first enhancement seeks to operate a given SMB configuration in a novel way which can lead to purities significantly higher than those achievable by conventional operation. This intensification is achieved without use of any new hardware elements. The second enhancement studies optimal transition between different economic objectives of the SMB as well as optimal recovery from unanticipated feed change scenario. These transitions enable flexible operation of the SMB.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Sharad Bhartiya is a professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India. He received his B.E., M. Tech and Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from NIT Durgapur, IIT Madras and Oklahoma State University. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Delaware after which he joined IIT Bombay in 2002. He has guided 9 PhD students, published 43 papers in peer reviewed journals, about 40 peer reviewed conference proceedings, and one book chapter. His current research interests include modeling, estimation and constrained control of switched systems, optimization of large scale dynamic systems, and systems biology primarily focused on various systems of yeast. On the engineering applications side, Prof. Bhartiya is involved in novel approaches for simulation moving bed chromatography, optimal operation of solar thermal power plants, fuel cells and techno-economic assessment of algal bio-refineries.