Title: Azeotropy in a refrigerant system: a useful scenario to test and compare metaheuristics

Authors: Gustavo Mendes Platt; Lucas Venancio Pires De Carvalho Lima

Addresses: Polytechnic Institute, Rio de Janeiro State University, Nova Friburgo, RJ, 28625570, Brazil ' Polytechnic Institute, Rio de Janeiro State University, Nova Friburgo, RJ, 28625570, Brazil

Abstract: The comparison between metaheuristics has been frequently addressed and, in a certain way, there is some controversy regarding the techniques to be employed in such comparison. In a multimodal problem, the capability of the algorithm to identify more than one solution must be considered. Computation time and/or the number of objective-function evaluations are possible metrics to be compared. The robustness and the accuracy of the methodologies are also fundamental quantities. In this work, we present a scenario of comparisons between two metaheuristics - the differential evolution (DE) and the symbiotic organisms search (SOS). This scenario consisted of a problem characterised by a nonlinear algebraic system (converted into an optimisation problem): the double azeotrope in the system ammonia + R-125. The results indicate that DE and SOS exhibit similar performances in the search for the first minimum. Nevertheless, the DE outperformed the SOS with respect to the capability to identify both minima.

Keywords: metaheuristics; azeotropy; refrigerant systems; thermodynamics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMHEUR.2018.091878

International Journal of Metaheuristics, 2018 Vol.7 No.1, pp.43 - 66

Received: 17 Nov 2016
Accepted: 26 Jul 2017

Published online: 20 May 2018 *

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