MULTI-OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS FOR ENERGY AND RESOURCE CONSERVATION IN PROCESS SYSTEMS

Efficient use of both energy and resources in process design was studied by the multi-objective analysis. Exergy consumption and total investment cost are used to measure energy and resource conservation, respectively. A family of e-constraint problems, in which the constraint is the exergy consumption, was formulated to obtain the trade-off between the two objectives and was solved successively by the max-sensitive method. The preferred solution is easily obtained for a specified condition by using the sensitivity profile along the non-inferior solution curve. An evaporator system for milk concentration is solved as an illustration.