Chemical batch processes have become significant in chemical manufacturing. In these processes, large numbers of chemical products are produced to satisfy human demands in daily life. Recently, economy globalization has resulted, in growing worldwide competitions in tradi.tional chemical .process industry. In order to keep competitive in the global marketplace, each company must optimize its production management and set up a reactive system for market fluctuation. Scheduling is the core of production management in chemical processes. The goal of this paper is to review the recent developments in this challenging area. Classifications of batch scheduling problems and optimization methods are introduced. A comparison of six typical models is shown in a general benchmark example from the literature. Finally, challenges and applications in future research are discussed.
An emulsion-congealing technique is used to prepare solid lipid microparticles （SLM） containing ibuprofen with glyceryl behenate, tripalmitin and beewax as excipients. The difference of the solubility parameters between the excipients and ibuprofen are used to analyze their compatibility. Both the solubility parameter analysis and the experimental results show that glyceryl behenate is the best among the three excipients. The solid particles disperse well in aqueous phase when the drug loading reaches 10% （relative to lipid only）. Glycerides exhibit marked polymorphism and their rapid rates of crystallization accelerate the formation of metastable crystal modification. The metastable crystal modification characterizes high drug loading capacity but less stability. Increasing the content of lipophilic drug in a lipid matrix facilitates the transformation of excipients to more stable polymorphic forms.
