The analysis of social aspects, such as occupational health, is as important as economic and environmental criteria in the design of sustainable chemical processes. Occupational health analyzes the relationship between work and health while enabling the identification of hazards that can cause injuries due to chronic exposure of the workers. This paper presents a multi-objective optimization approach for the methanol production process from natural/shale gas, different alternatives are proposed for the process configurations based on different equipment and technologies. The objective functions consist of maximizing the net profit, minimizing the total annual CO₂ emissions, and minimizing the occupational health hazard. The Process Route Healthiness Index is used to evaluate occupational health. The process model is developed using the Aspen HYSYS® process simulator. To carry out the optimization, a metaheuristic algorithm is used; the improved multi-objective differential evolution (I-MODE) algorithm was used with programming in Microsoft Excel visual basic for applications. Linking routines are established to enable the transfer of values of the process variables. A set of decision variables are established in a search interval whose manipulation has a considerable impact on the performance of the objective functions. The results offer feasible alternatives for the values of the search variables and show a considerable improvement in the specified objective functions. Different scenarios are proposed to prioritize each of the objectives for which the decision-maker can make a selection of the best values and the configuration that best suits specific interests.

在可持续化学过程的设计中，对社会方面（例如职业健康）的分析与经济和环境标准一样重要。职业健康分析工作与健康之间的关系，同时能够识别可能因工人长期接触而造成伤害的危害。本文提出了一种天然气/页岩气甲醇生产工艺的多目标优化方法，针对不同设备和技术的工艺配置提出了不同的替代方案。目标函数包括最大化净利润，最小化年度 CO ₂总量排放，并最大限度地减少职业健康危害。工艺路线健康指数用于评估职业健康。过程模型是使用 Aspen HYSYS® 过程模拟器开发的。为了进行优化，使用元启发式算法；改进的多目标差分进化 (I-MODE) 算法与 Microsoft Excel Visual Basic 中的应用程序一起使用。建立链接例程以实现过程变量值的传输。在搜索区间中建立了一组决策变量，其操作对目标函数的性能有相当大的影响。结果为搜索变量的值提供了可行的替代方案，并显示了指定目标函数的显着改进。