Filling a void in chemical engineering and optimization literature, this book presents the theory and methods for nonlinear and mixed-integer optimization, and their applications in the important area of process synthesis. Other topics include modeling issues in process synthesis, and optimization-based approaches in the synthesis of heat recovery systems, distillation-based systems, and reactor-based systems. The basics of convex analysis and nonlinear optimization are also covered and the elementary concepts of mixed-integer linear optimization are introduced. All chapters have several...

The vast majority of important applications in science, engineering and applied science are characterized by the existence of multiple minima and maxima, as well as first, second and higher order saddle points. The area of Deterministic Global Optimization introduces theoretical, algorithmic and computational ad- vances that (i) address the computation and characterization of global minima and maxima, (ii) determine valid lower and upper bounds on the global minima and maxima, and (iii) address the enclosure of all solutions of nonlinear con- strained systems of equations. Global optimization...

Optimization in Computational Chemistry and Molecular Biology: Local and Global Approaches covers recent developments in optimization techniques for addressing several computational chemistry and biology problems. A tantalizing problem that cuts across the fields of computational chemistry, biology, medicine, engineering and applied mathematics is how proteins fold. Global and local optimization provide a systematic framework of conformational searches for the prediction of three-dimensional protein structures that represent the global minimum free energy, as well as...

Global Optimization has emerged as one of the most exciting new areas of mathematical programming. Global optimization has received a wide attraction from many fields in the past few years, due to the success of new algorithms for addressing previously intractable problems from diverse areas such as computational chemistry and biology, biomedicine, structural optimization, computer sciences, operations research, economics, and engineering design and control. This book contains refereed invited papers submitted at the 4th international confer- ence on Frontiers in Global Optimization held at...

Significant research activity has occurred in the area of global optimization in recent years. Many new theoretical, algorithmic, and computational contributions have resulted. Despite the major importance of test problems for researchers, there has been a lack of representative nonconvex test problems for constrained global optimization algorithms. This book is motivated by the scarcity of global optimization test problems and represents the first systematic collection of test problems for evaluating and testing constrained global optimization algorithms. This collection includes problems...

Significant research activities have taken place in the areas of local and global optimization in the last two decades. Many new theoretical, computational, algorithmic, and software contributions have resulted. It has been realized that despite these numerous contributions, there does not exist a systematic forum for thorough experimental computational testing and- evaluation of the proposed optimization algorithms and their implementations. Well-designed nonconvex optimization test problems are of major impor- tance for academic and industrial researchers interested in algorithmic and...

Optimization problems abound in most fields of science, engineering, and tech- nology. In many of these problems it is necessary to compute the global optimum (or a good approximation) of a multivariable function. The variables that define the function to be optimized can be continuous and/or discrete and, in addition, many times satisfy certain constraints. Global optimization problems belong to the complexity class of NP-hard prob- lems. Such problems are very difficult to solve. Traditional descent optimization algorithms based on local information are not adequate for solving these...

Significant research activities have taken place in the areas of local and global optimization in the last two decades. Many new theoretical, computational, algorithmic, and software contributions have resulted. It has been realized that despite these numerous contributions, there does not exist a systematic forum for thorough experimental computational testing and- evaluation of the proposed optimization algorithms and their implementations. Well-designed nonconvex optimization test problems are of major impor- tance for academic and industrial researchers interested in algorithmic and...

The vast majority of important applications in science, engineering and applied science are characterized by the existence of multiple minima and maxima, as well as first, second and higher order saddle points. The area of Deterministic Global Optimization introduces theoretical, algorithmic and computational ad- vances that (i) address the computation and characterization of global minima and maxima, (ii) determine valid lower and upper bounds on the global minima and maxima, and (iii) address the enclosure of all solutions of nonlinear con- strained systems of equations. Global optimization...

Optimization in Computational Chemistry and Molecular Biology: Local and Global Approaches covers recent developments in optimization techniques for addressing several computational chemistry and biology problems. A tantalizing problem that cuts across the fields of computational chemistry, biology, medicine, engineering and applied mathematics is how proteins fold. Global and local optimization provide a systematic framework of conformational searches for the prediction of three-dimensional protein structures that represent the global minimum free energy, as well as...