量子强化学习提升化工流程合成效率,解决传统方法扩展性差问题。
Enhanced Reinforcement Learning-based Process Synthesis via Quantum Computing

- 将流程合成建模为马尔可夫决策过程,用量子强化学习求解。
- 在中等规模问题上,量子算法每轮表现相当,参数效率更优。
- 适合对量子计算与化工优化交叉领域感兴趣的科研人员。
本文提出一种基于量子强化学习(RL)的流程合成解决方案。在前期工作基础上,构建通用框架,将流程合成形式化为马尔可夫决策过程,并引入量子增强型强化学习算法以提升可扩展性。此前基于量子的强化学习在流程合成中受限于量子比特数量随问题复杂度急剧增长。本工作通过状态编码算法,实现量子比特需求与问题规模解耦。以经典强化学习作为基线,在相同训练条件下对比量子算法性能。所有算法在单元数递增的流程图合成问题上进行评估。结果表明,所有方法在小设计空间中均能识别最优流程结构;在中等规模单元数下,量子方法在单次试运行表现上具竞争力,且单位参数效率优于经典基准。本工作为流程系统工程中的量子计算应用奠定基础,建立了经典与量子算法的可控对比基准,并证实所提量子变体在本研究的问题中仍具竞争力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In this work, we present quantum reinforcement learning (RL) as a solution strategy for process synthesis problems. Building on our prior work, we develop a generalized framework that formally poses process synthesis as a Markov decision process and introduces quantum-enhanced RL algorithms to solve it with improved scalability. Earlier implementations of quantum-based RL for process synthesis were limited by qubit requirements, which scaled poorly with problem complexity. This work overcomes this challenge by introducing state encoding algorithms to decouple qubit requirements from problem size. A classical RL-based solution strategy is used as a baseline to benchmark the quantum algorithms under identical training conditions. All algorithms are evaluated across a flowsheet synthesis problem of increasing unit counts to analyze their performance and scalability. Results show that all approaches are capable of identifying the optimal flowsheet designs in small design spaces. For moderate-scale unit counts, quantum approaches demonstrate competitive performance on a per-episode basis and improved efficiency on a per-parameter basis versus the classical RL benchmark. This work provides a foundation for future quantum computing applications within process systems engineering, establishes a controlled benchmark for comparing classical and quantum algorithms, and shows that the proposed quantum variants remain competitive for the process synthesis problem examined in this work.
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