Process Design for Economic, Environmental and Safety Objectives with an Application to the Cumene Process

Abstract

Safety is very important in the process industry, but it has received much less attention than economic objectives in process optimization. Although it is difficult to quantify process safety at the preliminary design stage, several safety indices have been proposed to assess inherent safety of chemical processes. In this chapter, these safety indices are reviewed, and one of them is chosen for multi-objective optimization of the cumene process. The cumene production process is simulated and optimized for safety, environmental and economic objectives simultaneously. Integrated Inherent Safety Index (I2SI), material loss from the cumene process and total capital cost are respectively used as safety, environmental and economic objectives. Three bi-objective and one tri-objective optimization problems for the cumene process are solved using the elitist nondominated sorting genetic algorithm. The nondominated solutions obtained are presented and discussed. These are useful for better understanding of tradeoffs among the safety, environmental and economic objectives and for selecting a suitable design of cumene process. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.