Green process design, industrial ecology, and sustainability: A systems analysis perspective

This paper presents a systems analysis perspective that extends the traditional process design framework to green process design and industrial ecology leading to sustainability. For green process design this involves starting the design decisions as early as chemical and material selection stage on one end, and managing and planning decisions at the other end. However, uncertainties and multiple and conflicting objectives are inherent in such a design process. Uncertainties increase further in industrial ecology. Combining AI approaches with optimization methods, and constraining the system using thermodynamics and physics can provide a way to address this problem. The concept of overall sustainability goes beyond industrial ecology and brings in time dependent nature of the ecosystem and multi-disciplinary decision making. Optimal control methods and theories from financial literature can be useful in handling the time dependent uncertainties in this problem.