| A study on environmentally benign manufacturing (EBM) shows that global environmental concerns are changing the way industries do business. Multi-national corporations are moving towards manufacturing systems that are both economically and environmentally sound. To remain competitive in a global economy, the industry must keep pace with the worldwide trend toward “industrial ecology”.; Process modeling and optimization are two key issues for EBM in the process and manufacturing industry. The optimality of a solution in environmentally clean design and operation firstly relies on the completeness of problem description or the quality of process modeling. For a complicated process system for which multiple objectives are to be reached, process modeling should be task oriented. In this research, a task-oriented integrated modeling approach and three optimization schemes are developed. Steady state optimization and dynamic optimization are effectively integrated so that environmental, economical, and technological goals can be realized with less computational effort.; The methodology is applied to the design and operation of three industrial problems, i.e., pollution prevention in electroplating, engine calibration improvement and emission minimization, and clearcoat filmbuild improvement in automotive industry. The industrial implementation results show very good potential of the methodology. Part of the implementation has help the manufacturing industries greatly reduce cost and improve environment. |
