Methodology for the optimal thermo-economic, multi-objective design of thermochemical fuel production from biomass

This paper addresses a methodology for the optimal conceptual design of thermochemical fuel production processes from biomass. A decomposed modelling approach with separate energy-flow, energy-integration and economic models is presented and coupled to multi-objective optimisation, which allows to generate a set of optimal process flowsheets that constitute a sound basis for the synthesis of a viable process.