Software tools overview: Process integration, modelling and optimisation for energy saving and pollution reduction

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of software tools based on long experience and applications in the area of process integration, modelling and optimisation. The first part reviews the current design practice and the development of supporting software tools. Those are categorised as: (1) process integration and retrofit analysis tools, (2) general mathematical modelling suites with optimisation libraries, (3) flowsheeting simulation and (4) graph-based process optimisation tools. The second part covers an assessment of tools which enable the generation of new sustainable alternatives to adapt to the future needs. They deal with waste, environment, energy consumption, resources depletion and production cost constrains. The emphasis of the sustainable process design tools is largely on the evaluation of process viability under sustainable economic conditions, synthesis of sustainable process and supply chain process maintenance and life cycle analysis. Major software tools development and the potential of the research-based tools for sustainable process design task are overviewed in the concluding part. Copyright © 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.