Abstract
The steam and power system was formulated by a linear model of the continuous variables and binary (0-1) variables to obtain the optimal operation under discontinuity in the operation of units and nonlinearity of the process characteristics. The problem of finding the optimal operation to meet the system specifications became a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem. The robustness of the optimal operation, that is, the variation of the optimal solution by changes in the coefficients of the objective function and/or in the parameters included in the system constraints, was analyzed on the basis of geometric consideration of the MILP problem. As an illustration, the robustness of the optimal operation for an existing steam and power system was studied under various situations.
