Since the 1970s, the environmental regulation in developed countries has become substantially more stringent. While the best available information indicates that the overall benefits far exceed the costs, international firms usually have to sustain costs and competition with non-regulated countries.

Optimization-driven design, an iterative design process that uses simulation and machine learning to mimic nature’s evolutionary approach to design, offers the potential to boost sustainability across the manufacturing industry.

This talk will introduce a case study, an ethanol distillation process plant, to demonstrate the potential of the design process using an optimization approach.

Project engineers can use this methodology to aid the decision-making process during the design phase to quickly identify designs with an acceptable trade-off between robustness, cost, and performance in terms of environmental impact.