optimal design of flare height considering safe pollution levels in neighboring areas

The flare height is an important design parameter that has a direct impact on the economics of the plant, safety of the plant workers, and in particular, the health of the people living in some distance from the plant# the latter is especially true in industrial areas, where many flares concentrated in a small region contribute to a greater amount of pollution released to neighboring towns or cities# the flare designer must take all the above-mentioned factors into account, a task which is not trivial using traditional tools, especially in case of complex terrains# in this work, an optimization framework is proposed for systematic design of the heights of flares scattered over a certain area so that the flares cost is minimized, and at the same time, the safe radiation and pollution levels are met# two case studies are presented to both motivate the subject and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in handling optimal flare height design problems#