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A SYSTEMATIC PROCEDURE FOR DESIGNING PROCESSES WITH MULTIPLE ENVIRONMENTAL OBJECTIVES
Citation:
Kim**, K. J. AND R L. Smith*. A SYSTEMATIC PROCEDURE FOR DESIGNING PROCESSES WITH MULTIPLE ENVIRONMENTAL OBJECTIVES. Presented at AIChE National Meeting, Austin, TX, November 07 - 12, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Evaluation and analysis of multiple objectives are very important in designing environmentally benign processes. They require a systematic procedure for solving multi-objective decision-making problems due to the complex nature of the problems and the need for complex assessment. In this paper we present a systematic procedure for designing processes with multiple environmental objectives. This procedure has four steps: initialization, screening, evaluation, and visualization. The first two steps are used for systematic problem formulation based on mass and energy estimation and order of magnitude analysis. In the third step, an efficient parallel multi-objective steady-state genetic algorithm (pMSGA) is applied to design environmentally benign and economically viable processes and provide more accurate and uniform Pareto optimal solutions. In the last step a new visualization technique for illustrating multiple objectives and their design parameters on the same plot is developed. Through these seamless steps the decision-maker can easily determine design alternatives with respect to his or her preferences. In addition, this technique is independent of the number of objectives and design parameters. As a case study, acetic acid recovery from aqueous waste mixtures is investigated by minimizing eight potential environmental impacts and maximizing total profit. After applying the systematic procedure, the most preferred design alternatives and their design parameters are easily identified. It is also found that at medium and high feed compositions the total profit is very promising and that the environmental impact generations are quite small as well.