Mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPECs) in process engineering

Mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPECs) form a relatively new and interesting subclass of nonlinear programming problems. In this paper we propose a novel method of solving MPECs by appropriate reformulation of the equilibrium conditions. The reformulation can be easily incorporated in a certain class of interior point algorithms for nonlinear optimization. The algorithm used in the study follows a primal-dual interior point approach and shows encouraging results on a test suite of MPECs. The algorithm is also able to perform optimization of distillation columns with phase changes and tray optimization using only continuous variables. We also consider a number of topics to improve performance of the algorithm and to identify classes of process engineering problems that can be handled as MPECs.