Traditional criteria for designing processes that utilize only economic aspects can have a negative impact on the environment and society. In this study, a process for the production of dimethyl ether (DME) from methanol is evaluated by employing sustainability metrics. Operational conditions are optimized by implementing a rigorous global multi-objective optimization algorithm based on maximization of economic performance measured by the return on investment (ROI) and minimization of environmental and social impacts. The most efficient operational conditions for DME production based on sustainability criteria are obtained with a homotopy continuation method in conjunction with a process simulator. The resulting conditions indicate that the global warming metric of the DME process is decreased more than 10 times and the decrease of photochemical smog formation, mass intensity and energy intensity is 96%, 12% and 9%, respectively. The optimized, sustainable process shows an only an insignificant reduction in terms of economic aspect.

设计仅利用经济方面的流程的传统标准可能会对环境和社会产生负面影响。在这项研究中，通过采用可持续性指标评估了由甲醇生产二甲醚（DME）的过程。通过实施严格的全局多目标优化算法来优化运营条件，该算法基于通过投资回报率（ROI）衡量的经济绩效的最大化以及对环境和社会影响的最小化。通过同伦连续方法结合过程模拟器，可以获得基于可持续性标准的DME生产的最有效操作条件。结果表明，DME过程的全球变暖指标降低了10倍以上，光化学烟雾形成，质量强度和能量强度的降低分别为96％，12％和9％。经过优化的，可持续的流程在经济方面仅表现出微不足道的减少。