An outer-approximation method for multiperiod design optimization

Abstract: "This paper addresses the development of an efficient optimization method for convex nonlinear and mixed-integer nonlinear multiperiod design optimization problems. An example of this class of problems that are addressed in this paper are the multiperiod multiproduct batch plant design problems with single product campaign. A multiperiod model is presented for the design and future capacity expansions of such plants. Finally, numerical results are presented drawing comparison with existing general solution methods such as MINOS and SQP for the NLP case, and DICOPT++ for the MINLP case. The proposed method is advantageous in both time efficiency, with savings up to 90%, and robustness."