Process simulation for sustainable engineering

Dr. Anke Seeger, Exyte’s Director of Process Life Sciences for Central Europe and Andrea Uebele Senior Manager Simulation & Logistic, explore how simulation can drive sustainability in high-utilization production environments. With growing pressure to reduce energy, water, and waste, Anke highlights how simulation empowers data-driven decisions and supports sustainable engineering.

Sustainable manufacturing is a virtually ubiquitous goal for organizations seeking to modernize their manufacturing processes and align with internal and external expectations for environmental responsibility. Sustainable practices often translate into higher resource efficiency, providing a competitive advantage in addition to progress toward sustainability goals. However, implementing sustainable practices without the proper foresight can leave companies vulnerable to wasted resources and diminished sustainability.

Exytes Process and Logistic Simulations allow teams to make confident, data-driven decisions that will lead to greater efficiency of production processes and sustainability in energy and utility consumption. This article examines the impact of Exyte’s process simulation services across four core areas, highlighting the challenges teams face and how process simulation helps overcome them. By partnering with Exyte, companies can pioneer sustainable practices in clean energy usage, innovative infrastructure, and responsible production.

Heat recovery

Challenge

Water is a crucial component of production processes and is implemented at a variety of temperatures for different procedures. Continuous processes have high energy demands for heating and cooling water, and the energy of heated water can be used to power different processes. However, determining optimal timings and infrastructure for effective heat transfer can be challenging, causing companies to waste valuable energy that could otherwise be recovered and reused.

Solution

Exyte uses Pinch technology to identify optimal points for heat transfer in production processes, notably during simultaneities, where processes benefiting from energy transfer occur at the same time.

Results

The result of Exyte simulations is a heat recovery concept that significantly reduces energy consumption for both heating and cooling, contributing to lower CO2 footprints and operational costs.

CO2 footprint

Challenge

Reducing CO2 footprint is a central component of sustainable production. However, teams can struggle when trying to understand what processes or equipment will lead to greater reductions in CO2 footprint over long time periods. These choices are often more complex than they appear. For instance, choosing between stainless steel and single-use equipment for buffer and media preparation may seem like an obvious choice when it comes to sustainability. However, without accurate predictive tools, teams risk making decisions based on assumptions rather than data, and overinvesting in materials or infrastructure that do not significantly contribute to their sustainability goals.

Solution

When comparing single-use vs. stainless steel, Exyte uses life cycle assessment simulation using INOSIM® to assess CO2 footprint of production processes, clean-in-place (CIP), utilities, and media/buffer preparation steps.

Results

Exyte used its capabilities to simulate multiple years of production time and identify a significant potential of reduction in CO2 footprint when single-use bags were used compared to stainless steel. The analysis showed that the CIP demands of the stainless-steel approach generated a far bigger CO2 footprint than the additional waste produced by single-use systems.

Media and power management

Challenge

Simultaneous processes can cause large spikes in power or media demands. Identifying peaks in consumption is crucial for driving greater sustainability, but changing parameters in production, WFI, CIP, sterilize-in-place (SIP), and other processes can introduce risk and inefficiencies.

Solution

Exyte provides simulation services with analysis of CIP and SIP procedures, media and buffer demands as well as electrical consumption data. This means teams can confidently adapt procedures, adjust loop sizes and perform “peak shaving,” where the causes of peaks are assessed and mitigated through better planning and resource allocation.

Results

The result of better media and power management is a reduction in peak energy consumption and greater operational efficiency. Peak shaving harmonizes with other sustainability efforts like heat recovery, where identifying ways to reuse energy can reduce overall consumption and help spread consumption more evenly across processes and batches.

Sustainable architecture

Challenge

Future-proofing is a core concern for companies looking to modernize existing facilities or construct new plants. It is far easier to embed sustainability into the design of new facilities than to retrofit sustainable practices into older plants. Production facilities are complex environments requiring constant movement of workers, equipment, and materials across specialized spaces. A frequent issue that arises is the appropriate sizing of specific areas. Undersizing limits operations while constructing an area that is too large leads to inefficiencies for maintenance and utility costs.

Solution

Exyte implements a FlexSim® model to track the number of people, trucks, or goods per time interval within a given space, and generates minimum, maximum, and average values. This allows teams to simulate the effect of area sizes on the frequency of key endpoints, such as finished product at the loading dock. This allows teams to define optimal facility sizing and helps identify spikes in activity that could be mitigated by improved scheduling.

Results

Exyte simulation tools help organizations construct or reconfigure spaces that are optimized for their current operations while taking the requirements for future growth into consideration. In an increasingly competitive environment, sustainable architecture can act as a bedrock helping teams build sustainable practices from the ground up. Appropriate sizing removes unnecessary maintenance, utility, and construction costs while ensuring efficient operations.

Conclusion and outlook

While simulations can pinpoint optimizations in specific processes, their true strength lies in providing a holistic assessment of an entire project or plant. Procedures and logistical workflows don’t exist in isolation and require smooth integration. Although this complexity adds significant challenges, with the right simulation tools and expertise, it also provides opportunities for companies to optimize sustainability efforts through data-driven energy transfer strategies, consumption “peak shaving,” and procedure optimizations.

Ultimately, these efforts lead to significant reductions in energy consumption and CO2 footprint while empowering companies to invest wisely in sustainable practices backed by data and expert insight.

Simulations are only valuable if experts are available who understand the latest innovations and sustainable practices, and can ensure that scenarios are both realistic and implementable. With over a century of expertise and experience, Exyte has helped to safely steer companies through countless trends, regulatory shifts, and market fluctuations. We are perfectly positioned to help companies adapt to the challenges posed by ambitious sustainability goals, putting the latest simulation tools at their disposal to ensure long-term success.

Contact an Exyte team member today to learn how process simulation can reduce risk and ensure lasting success for your sustainability initiatives.