Resource Efficiency-oriented Optimization of Material Flow Networks in Chemical Process Engineering

Material flow networks of chemical processes and production systems provide valuable information on energy and material consumption, related costs and environmental impacts including life cycle aspects. Such holistic information facilitates changes towards more sustainable and resource-efficient process design and production system planning. These changes require detailed information on cause-effect relationships between process design parameters, economic performance, and environmental impacts. This paper presents how chemical process design models can be integrated in material flow networks to obtain information on crucial design parameters from a resource efficiency perspective. Furthermore, the use of optimization methods in this complex decision setting is demonstrated based on newly developed software prototypes and plug-ins.