Energy 29 (2004) 11391157

www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

Energy, economy and environment as objectives in

multi-criterion optimization of thermal systems design
A. Lazzaretto
, A. Toolo
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Padova, Via Venezia, 1-35131 Padova, Italy
Received 13 November 2002

Abstract
The paper shows how a thermal system design can be optimized using energy, economy and environment as separate objectives. Comparisons with a single-objective thermo-economic optimization and a
two-objective energetic and economic optimization are also discussed. The test case plant of the CGAM
problem is taken as an example of application for the three-objective approach. An environmental impact
objective function is dened and expressed in cost terms by weighting carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide
emissions according to their unit damage costs. An evolutionary algorithm is used to nd the surface of
optimal solutions in the space dened by the three objective functions.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Energy systems involve a large number and various types of interactions with the world outside their physical boundaries. The designer must, therefore, face many issues, which deal primarily with the energetic, economic and environmental aspects of the system. Thermodynamic
laws govern energy conversion processes, costs are involved in obtaining the nal products
(expenses for the purchase of equipment and input energy resources, operation and maintenance
costs), and the eects of undesired uxes to the ambient must be evaluated in order to answer
environmental concerns. An integrated approach would be preferred to be able to deal with all
these aspects.
Traditional design procedures start with an evaluation of the thermodynamic performance of
the system subject to physical and technical constraints (see, e.g., [1,2]). The costs of the feasible

Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-049-827-6747; fax: +39-049-827-6785.

E-mail address: andrea.lazzaretto@unipd.it (A. Lazzaretto).

0360-5442/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.energy.2004.02.022

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Nomenclature
A,x,y,z coecients in Gulders expression [28]
c
unit cost
_
cost rate
C
e
specic exergy
_E
exergy ow rate
_
m
mass ow rate
p
pressure
compressor pressure ratio
rcp
T
temperature
x
vector of decision variables
w
weight coecient
_
power
W
cost rate associated with a component
Z_
Greek letters
a,b,k,r coecients in Gulders expression [28]
air preheater eectiveness
eap
f
exergetic eciency of the plant
gcp
compressor isentropic eciency
gas turbine isentropic eciency
ggt
ghrsg HRSG rst law eciency
h
dimensionless temperature
p
dimensionless pressure
s
combustor residence time
/
fuel to air equivalence ratio
w
fuel H/C atomic ratio
Subscripts
0
ambient
env
environmental impact
fuel
fuel
i
plant component
inv
investment
NET net electrical
P
pinch point
pz
combustion primary zone
ref
reference
steam ow of feedwater/steam
total total plant

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solutions are then estimated to determine the protability of the corresponding investments.
Modications of the design parameters to improve energetic and/or economic performance generate back and forth iterations to get the nal design. Some limits may exist on the environmental resources needed for plant operation (e.g., air, water) and restrictions may or may not be
imposed on the pollutant emissions generated by plant operation. All of these are considered as
constraints that may reduce the ranges of feasible values for the design parameters.
Thermo-economics combines exergy analysis and economic principles [214] to evaluate the
costs of exergy destruction in each of its components. These costs can be useful to the designer
in nding the most cost-eective components and then in improving the overall system design.
Therefore, thermo-economic analyses have merely an economic objective, that is the minimization of the sum of equipment capital costs and input resource costs. The evaluation of this
objective function requires the denition of a thermodynamic and economic model of the system, both based on system design parameters. When the economic model is incomplete, purchased-equipment cost functions can be estimated by statistical regression analyses using
available data.
In addition to the exergetic and monetary costs of mass and energy streams in the system,
environomics considers the costs related to ows of other resources consumed and the costs
related to ows of pollutants [15]. The thermo-economic objective function is used with the
addition of one or more terms which depend on the environmental and social costs from undesired emissions [16] and on the pollution costs associated with system equipment manufacture
and removal and with resource preparation and transport [17]. Since all these terms are costs,
the objective function is still economic (in this sense, the non-abbreviated term thermo-enviroeconomics would be more appropriate, as recognized by Frangopoulos [15]), penalties being
applied on the basis of generated pollution. A variant of the environomic approach is used in
[18], where the objective function considers a carbon tax on CO2 production as a penalty term
and includes the costs of pollutant abatement devices and CO2 sequestration to the cost of
equipment. A dierent penalty term linked to operational ineciencies is considered in [19].
Multi-objective optimization techniques allow the enlargement of the perspective of singleobjective energy system analyses and the determination of the complete spectrum of solutions
that optimize the design according to more than one objective at a time. As in most practical
decision-making problems, multiple objectives compete with one another and a unique optimal
solution with respect to all of them cannot be identied. Therefore, the concept of Pareto optimal solution must be introduced to assess whether a solution is optimal or not. A feasible
solution is called Pareto optimal if no other feasible solution has a performance at least equal in
all the objectives, but strictly better in at least one of them [20]. The objective function values
corresponding to the set of Pareto optimal solutions, representing the best possible trade-os
among the objectives, are called the Pareto front.
A multi-objective approach based on Pareto concepts was recently suggested in [21] to optimize the design of the CGAM problem system [22] using an energetic and an economic objective. The Pareto front between maximum exergetic eciency and minimum total cost rate has
the exergetic maximum and the economic minimum as extremes. Single-objective analyses,
either energetic or economic, would search for only one of the two extremes. In particular, the
economic minimum coincides with the optimum of the thermo-economic approach [2326],
which results from a trade-o between minimum fuel and investment cost rates (see Fig. 1). All

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Fig. 1. Comparison between the solutions of the thermo-economic and the two-objective (energetic and economic)
optimization approaches.

the intermediate solutions on the Pareto front (right-hand side of the minimum total cost curve
deriving from the sum of minimum fuel and investment cost rates) are not considered by singleobjective approaches; but, nevertheless, they are optimal in their own right, and may be signicant in the decision-making process. For instance, a strategic decision on the nal design choice
could consider an intermediate solution according to possible variations in fuel costs which may
aect the set included in the Pareto front [21].
In this paper, the environmental impact is considered as a third objective. This choice corresponds to the natural desire to convert energy sources with maximum eciency, at minimum
cost, and with minimum environmental impact. Such a point of view is dierent from singleobjective (energetic or economic) or two-objective (energetic and economic) optimizations, in
which upper limits on pollutant emissions, deriving from environmental regulation, are
imposed. It also diers from adding some penalty terms related to the amount of pollution
release to a global cost function. In fact, the multi-objective Pareto approach denes a (possibly
unbounded) surface of optimal trade-os among the three objectives, in which each extremum
point is the optimum solution with respect to one of them, and the edge curves are the optimal
solutions (in a Pareto sense) between two of the three. This approach is applied here to optimize
the design parameters of the CGAM problem plant, extending the work presented in [21] for
energetic and economic objectives. Emission correlations are included in the model and a new
environmental objective function is dened.

2. On the dierence between single- and multi-objective approaches

The Pareto approach is not the only possible way to deal with multi-objective optimization.
In fact, single-objective approaches do not necessarily deal with fewer objectives than multiobjective approaches since they can weigh explicitly or implicitly multiple objectives into an
overall single-objective function. The dierent optimal solutions on the Pareto front can then be
obtained by varying the weight coecients.

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1143

Thermo-economic or environomic analyses performed in the literature include more cost

terms into a single-objective function, so that a pure economic function with xed weighting is
considered in both cases. For clarity of presentation, the discussion on the dierence between
single- and multi-objective optimizations is limited in the following to the comparison between
the traditional thermo-economic and the two-objective (energetic and economic) optimization.
The same conclusions would be conceptually drawn by comparing the environomic and the
three-objective (energetic, economic and environmental) approaches.
The thermo-economic objective function to be minimized expresses the total cost rate as the
sum of fuel and investment (equipment/maintenance) cost rates:
C_ total C_ fuel fx C_ inv x

(1)

where f is the exergetic eciency, and x is a vector containing the design variables. C_ total
includes thermodynamic information in the fuel cost rate (C_ fuel cfuel E_ fuel ) through E_ fuel (fuel
exergy ow rate), which directly depends on the exergetic eciency f when the analysis is performed at constant total product. This dependence does not change the nature of the objective
function, which still accounts for the total money to be spent. Thus, the two terms of the function, that in principle are associated with two dierent objectives (Fig. 1), merge into a single
objective C_ total implicitly including the exergetic eciency f with the unit cost of fuel cfuel as a
transformation coecient. As mentioned in Section 1, if C_ total is minimized for a particular unit
cost of fuel, only the extremum of the Pareto front corresponding to the economic minimum in
Fig. 1 is found.
On the other hand, in a single-objective approach considering both the thermodynamic and
economic objectives (f and C_ total ), the overall single-objective function (to be maximized) would
be constructed by combining the two functions through appropriate weights, as follows:
Fx w1  fx  w2  C_ total x; fx w1  fx  w2  C_ total x

(2)

with 0  w1 , w2  1 and w1 w2 1:
By varying the weight coecients w1 and w2, the same optimal solutions belonging to the Pareto front of the multi-objective approach are obtained, one for each value of the weight coefcients (Fig. 2a).
Note that if cfuel is varied in Eq. (1), only points 1,2,3,. . . on the dashed line in Fig. 2b would
be obtained, each one associated with the economic optimum for a given value of cfuel . These
points are only the leftmost points of the Pareto fronts that are obtained using the single-objective (Eq. (2)) or the multi-objective approaches.

3. Dening the environmental objective in the energetic, economic and environmental

multi-objective approach
The natural desire of converting energy resources into dierent forms while preserving the
environment results in the denition of an environmental index of performance which departs
from any index of thermodynamic performance. In fact, the outcomes of the energy conversion

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A. Lazzaretto, A. Toolo / Energy 29 (2004) 11391157

Fig. 2. Comparison between the single- and the multi-objective approaches to the energetic and economic design optimization of energy systems.

process are not only the desired products (mechanical and/or thermal energy at a required
temperature level), but also toxic emissions (e.g., NOx, CO, UHC), CO2 emissions, thermal
pollution (e.g., warming of process air and water), solid wastes, etc. The minimization of all
these undesired eects may, therefore, be a distinct objective from the energetic one.
A single pollutant can be considered in such an environmental impact objective according
to its degree of harmfulness. If more than one pollution source is taken into account, their
degrees of harmfulness can be introduced as relative weights of each pollutant measure. The
weighting criterion may also derive from economic considerations, when the unit damage cost
of each pollutant is available. The exergetic content of pollutant emissions can be considered as
another set of weighting factors, yet not the most eective. These criteria can also be combined
to form a hybrid criterion which includes information from each of them. The choice among
these options is clearly subjective and directly aects the mathematical formulation of the
environmental impact objective function, whereas it does not inuence the formulation of the
other objectives. In particular, links may not exist between the environmental impact and economic objectives (e.g., taxes on pollutant emissions are not imposed in many countries, or, if they
are imposed, they are often based on the installed power and the relationship with the emission
rate is not direct). Furthermore, using unit damage costs to weigh the contribution of each pollutant considered in the environmental impact objective function does not aect the exibility of
taking into account pollution costs in the economic objective. In other words, the minimization
of the environmental impact remains a distinct objective from the minimization of system total
cost even if pollution costs themselves are already included in the economic objective, as suggested in environomics. As a nal remark, note that when the only pollutant considered is CO2
production, which is directly proportional to fuel consumption, and in turn depends on the
exergetic eciency, the environmental objective does not compete with the energetic one
(exergetic eciency). In this case, the surface of the Pareto front degenerates to the curve of the
optimal solutions of the two-objective (energetic and economic) optimization problem.

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4. Example of application
4.1. The CGAM problem
The well-known CGAM problem [22], a test case developed in the early 90s to compare different thermo-economic optimization methods [2326], is used here with some modications
and additions to apply the multi-objective design optimization discussed above.
The CGAM problem regards the search for the optimal design variables of a cogeneration
plant producing electrical energy and steam with a xed and constant demand. The installation
is made up of a basic gas turbine cycle with regeneration, and of a heat recovery steam generator for saturated steam production (Fig. 3). Plant outputs are 30 MW of electrical power and
14 kg/s of saturated steam at 20 bar.

Fig. 3. Flowsheet diagram of the CGAM plant [22].

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The thermodynamic model proposed in [22] is very straightforward, yet complex enough to
highlight the role played by the most important variables and to obtain signicant results. The
following assumptions are made to simplify the problem:
.
.
.
.
.
.

air and combustion gases are considered as ideal gases with constant specic heats;
fuel is assumed to be pure methane (CH4);
all the components, except for the combustor, are adiabatic;
constant pressure loss ratios are considered in the components;
xed values for all thermodynamic quantities on the steam side of the HRSG are given;
v
environmental conditions of the air at the inlet are: p0 1:013 bar and T0 25 C; these values are also used as the reference in enthalpy and exergy calculations.

The economic model assesses the component costs, including amortization and maintenance,
and the cost of fuel consumption. The resulting formulation of the total cost of operation must
obviously depend on the optimization variables of interest. Thus, the cost of each component is
expressed as a function of thermodynamic variables: statistical correlations can be used to
obtain these relationships from real data series. In [22], the purchased-equipment cost functions
for all plant components are already supplied as is the unit cost of fuel.

4.2. Combustion pollutants

The original CGAM problem does not perform calculations on the formation of pollutants
within the combustion chamber. A simple model, based on semi-analytical correlations, is
added here to the thermo-economic model to determine pollutant emissions, which are essential
for the setup of an environmental objective function.
Only dry low-NOx combustors featuring staged combustion are considered in this application. In these combustors the abatement of emissions is achieved through the control of ame
temperature [27]: a lightly loaded premixed primary combustion zone, operating at a fuel to air
equivalence ratio of around 0.8, is sucient to drive the engine at low power conditions, while
at higher power settings it provides a pilot source of heat for the secondary (main) combustion
zone supplied with a lean premixed fuelair mixture. At maximum power, the equivalence ratio
in both zones can be kept as low as 0.6 to minimize NOx and smoke. The choice of considering
this particular class of combustors is made for two main reasons:
. staged combustion is widely used in heavy-duty gas turbines burning gaseous fuels to achieve
low NOx emission without the need of resorting to water/steam injection or catalytic reactions;
. the combustor cost is not aected by the level of pollutant emissions and the cost correlation
proposed in [22], which depends on air mass ow rate and turbine inlet temperature, is still
valid; otherwise, if dierent combustion technologies were considered, the combustor cost
function should take into account the fact that low emission combustors are more expensive.

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1147

The adiabatic ame temperature in the primary zone of the combustion chamber is derived
from the expression by Gulder [28]:
Tpz Ara expbr k2 px hy wz
where p is a dimensionless pressure p/pref (p being the combustion pressure p3, and
pref 101; 300 Pa); h is a dimensionless temperature T/Tref (T being the inlet temperature T3,
and Tref 300 K); w is the H/C atomic ratio (w 4, the fuel being pure methane); r / for
/  1, / being the fuel to air equivalence ratio (/ is assumed constant, see Section 5); x, y and z
are quadratic functions of r; A, a, b and k are constants (dierent sets of constants are used for
dierent ranges of / and h).
The adiabatic ame temperature is used in the semi-analytical correlations proposed by Rizk
and Mongia [29] to determine the pollutant emissions in grams per kilogram of fuel:
NOx

0:15E16s0:5 exp71100=Tpz
0:18E9 exp7800=Tpz
; CO
0:05
0:5
p23 sDp3 =p3 0:5
p3 Dp3 =p3

where s is the residence time in the combustion zone (s is assumed constant and is equal to
0.002 s); Tpz is the primary zone combustion temperature; p3 is the combustor inlet pressure;
Dp3/p3 is the non-dimensional pressure drop in the combustor (Dp3 =p3 0:05 as in the CGAM
problem [22]).
Note that the primary zone temperature is used in the NOx correlation instead of the stoichiometric temperature, since the maximum attainable temperature in premixed ames is Tpz, as
pointed out by Lefebvre [27].

4.3. Objective functions, decision variables and constraints

4.3.1. Denition of the objectives
The three objective functions of the multi-criterion optimization problem are the exergetic
eciency of the cogeneration plant (to be maximized), the total cost rate of operation (to be
minimized) and the environmental impact (to be minimized). The second objective can be
expressed in two ways, with or without pollution damage costs. The third objective function
expresses the environmental impact as the total pollution damage cost ($/s) due to CO2 and
NOx emissions by multiplying their respective ow rates by their corresponding unit damage
cost [17] (cCO2 and cNOx are levelized back to 1994 to keep all cost values homogeneous and they
are equal to 0.02086 $=kgCO2 and 6.853 $=kgNOx , respectively). The mathematical formulation of
the three objectives is the following:
energetic f

_ NET m
_ steam e9  e8
W
_ fuel efuel
m

economic C_ total C_ fuel Ri Z_ i or C_ total C_ fuel Ri Z_ i C_ env

environmental

_ CO2 cNOx m
_ NOx
C_ env cCO2 m

(3)
(4)
(5)

As stressed in Section 3, the choice of expressing the environmental impact in cost terms and,

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A. Lazzaretto, A. Toolo / Energy 29 (2004) 11391157

on the other hand, of including C_ env in the economic objective, does not alter the distinct nature
of the two objectives.
4.3.2. Choice of decision variables
The thermodynamic and economic models of the CGAM problem present ve degrees of
freedom:
.
.
.
.
.

rcp p2 =p1 (compressor pressure ratio);

gcp (compressor isentropic eciency);
T4 (gas turbine inlet temperature);
ggt (gas turbine isentropic eciency);
eap (air preheater eectiveness).

Here, for purposes of simplication, three among these were chosen as decision design variables
(rcp, T4, eap ), while the other two were held constant (gcp 0:8468 and ggt 0:8786 to obtain
the same economic minimum of the CGAM problem when the rst objective function of Eq. (4)
is used). The variable eap was used instead of T3 (used in the original CGAM problem) in order
to reduce the number of non-feasible solutions that may occur during the optimization process.
4.3.3. Physical constraints (feasibility conditions)
The heat exchange between hot and cold streams in the air preheater and in the HRSG must
satisfy the following feasibility constraints:
air preheater T5 > T3 ; T6 > T2

(6)

HRSG DTP T7P  T9 > 0; T6 T9 DTP ; T7 T8 DTP ; ghrsg  1

(7)

An additional constraint, with respect to the original CGAM problem, is imposed on the
v
exhaust gases temperature, which must not fall below 105 C:
HRSG T7 > 378:15 K

(8)

4.4. Optimization tools

As in any multi-objective optimization problem involving conicting objectives, a set of optimal trade-os among the energetic, economic and environmental objectives have to be found in
the objective function space. This, in turn, corresponds to the search for the Pareto optimal set,
which is one of the most challenging tasks in optimization. The most suitable technique is to use
a particular class of search algorithms known as multi-objective evolutionary algorithms
(MOEAs) [30], which have proven to be able to overcome the diculties faced by classical or
gradient-based methods. In fact, MOEAs use a population of solutions during the search, and
are able to nd many Pareto optimal solutions in a single run. Moreover, solutions can be
widely spread over the Pareto optimal set if the algorithm is improved by adding a diversitypreserving mechanism. Several methods have been proposed in the last years to push the search
towards diverse Pareto optimal solutions. In this paper, the GeDEM, a new diversity-preserving
method recently developed in [31], is used. The basic idea of the GeDEM is to consider the

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1149

diversity within the population of solutions as an objective itself, so that the search is driven
towards the exploration around the most promising solutions as well as the exploration of the
entire search space. In addition, this method does not introduce the denition of arbitrary
parameters that are dicult to set without prior knowledge of the objective function and can
aect the performance of the evolutionary algorithm.
As in [21], the equations of the thermodynamic, economic and environmental models are
implemented in the Matlab/Simulink environment.

5. Results and discussion

5.1. Optimization runs
The rst two runs of the optimization algorithm were performed to investigate the eect of
two dierent fuel to air equivalence ratios (/ 0:68 and 0.64) in the primary zone of the combustion chamber. Varying / is equivalent to assigning a dierent importance to the NOx term in
the combined CO2NOx environmental objective function, because of the major eect this parameter has on the ame temperature in the primary zone, and, therefore, on the NOx emissions.
In other words, if the environmental objective was measured only by NOx emissions, the search
for the minimum environmental impact would lead towards the lowest pressure ratios and air
preheater eectiveness to reduce air temperature at the combustor inlet. This, in turn, results in
the lowest exergetic eciencies for the total plant. This trend can be overcome by lowering the
relative weight of NOx emissions in the combined CO2NOx environmental objective function
and driving the search towards a trade-o between low-f high-CO2-emitting solutions and highf high-NOx-emitting solutions. If the eect of CO2 emissions in the environmental objective
function is predominant, the optimization procedure leads towards high-eciency solutions
since, as mentioned above, the Pareto surface degenerates to the energetic objective and the
environmental and energetic objectives are satised simultaneously.
In these two optimization runs, pollution costs are not included in the economic objective
function, which is the same as that for the original CGAM problem (the rst objective function
of Eq. (4)). In the third run, pollution costs are included in the economic objective function (the
second of Eq. (4) is used) and only / 0:64 is considered.
5.2. Links between the objective functions
The three objective functions are related by the constraint on xed plant production, because
_ CO2 and m
_ NOx ) depend on m
_ fuel ,
the fuel cost ow rate (C_ fuel ) and pollutant mass ow rates (m
and in turn on the exergetic eciency. Thus, low fuel consumption pushes towards a reduction
of the economic and environmental objective function values, in addition to the expected
improvement of the exergetic eciency. This eect is balanced by the simultaneous increase of
the equipment capital costs and of the specic pollutant production due to NOx formation
(kgNOx =kgfuel ). The relative weights of these conicting trends determine the set of optimal
solutions.

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5.3. Eect of NOx level on the three-objective optimal surface (Pareto front)
The surfaces of the Pareto fronts found by the algorithm in the rst two optimization runs
are shown in Figs. 4 and 6 for / 0:68 and 0.64, respectively. Figs. 5 and 7 show, for the two
cases, the Pareto optimal sets, that is the decision variables of the Pareto optimal (presented in
the rcp T4 plane and in the eap  T4 plane), and the surfaces of the Pareto fronts projected
onto the planes dened by two objectives at a time.
Points on the surfaces of the Pareto fronts (Figs. 4 and 6) represent the best possible tradeos among the three objectives. Points in the space bounded by these surfaces represent solutions that are not Pareto optimal because at least one of their objective functions takes a worse
value than that of a solution on the Pareto front, the others possibly being equal.
In both cases, the economic minimum, marked with a square in Figs. 5, 7 and 9, is the same
solution as that of the original CGAM problem (total cost rate 0.362 $/s for f 0:5065): it corresponds to a peak of the environmental objective function since the eects of both a low pressure ratio and a high ame temperature (due to a high eap ) result in a high level of NOx
emissions, while the exergetic eciency is lower than its maximum value and contributes to a
rather high level of CO2 emissions.
Neither an absolute maximum for exergetic eciency nor an absolute minimum for the
environmental impact can be determined because of the technological limits imposed on the

Fig. 4. Optimal values of the three-objective functions (Pareto front) using the rst objective function of Eq. (4) as
the economic objective and / 0:68.

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1151

Fig. 5. (a) and (d) optimal values of the decision variables (Pareto optimal set) (b), (c) and (e) projections of
the Pareto front in Fig. 4, using the rst objective function of Eq. (4) as the economic objective and / 0:68.

variation of the decision variables (T4 < 1700 K, eap > 0:4). On the other hand, a possibly unrealistic increase in total costs (due to the growth of investment costs depending on the set of
component cost laws adopted) already appears within those limits. Therefore, the Pareto front
is articially limited (maximum total cost rate 2$/s) to exclude the solutions that would result in
prohibitive costs. Both the exergetic maximum and the environmental minimum are then found
at the chosen limit of total cost (2 $/s in Figs. 5b and 7b), for maximum and minimum exergetic eciency, respectively, and are marked with a triangle and a circle in Figs. 5, 7 and 9. For
/ 0:68, the exergetic maximum is f 0:539, corresponding to an environmental impact of
0.1292 $/s, and the environmental minimum is 0.1142 $/s (f 0:4875). For / 0:64, the
exergetic maximum is f 0:539, corresponding to an environmental impact of 0.105 $/s, and
the environmental minimum is 0.1031 $/s (f 0:503).

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Fig. 6. Optimal values of the three-objective functions (Pareto front) using the rst objective function of Eq. (4) as
the economic objective and / 0:64.

The two Pareto surfaces (Figs. 4 and 6) are apparently dierent, because the two dierent levels of NOx emissions have a very signicant inuence upon the shape and the extension of the
Pareto front. By varying /, the environmental objective function values of the solutions are
altered, whereas the coordinates in the exergetic and economic objectives remain unchanged.
For / 0:68, solutions having higher exergetic eciencies suer a larger penalty in the environmental objective function due to the higher NOx levels considered (compare the gradients of the
surface with respect to f in Figs. 4 and 6). On the other hand, a large number of optimal solutions are found at much lower exergetic eciencies (compare Figs. 5b and c and 7b and c), in
spite of the relatively small dierence between the values minimizing the environmental impact
(f 0:4875 for / 0:68 and f 0:503 for / 0:64). When a lower NOx level is considered
(/ 0:64), the environmental impact of these solutions is increased due to the higher relative
weight of CO2 emissions and becomes equal to that of solutions having a higher exergetic
eciency at the same value of total costs. Thus, these solutions can no longer belong to the
Pareto front. This fact also reects on the Pareto optimal set, from which solutions having the
lowest T4 and eap are excluded.

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1153

Fig. 7. (a) and (d) optimal values of the decision variables (Pareto optimal set) (b), (c) and (e) projections of the
Pareto front in Fig. 6, using the rst objective function of Eq. (4) as the economic objective and / 0:64.

For both / values, the minimum for the environmental objective is found at the minimum air
preheater eectiveness of the Pareto optimal set (Figs. 5d and 7d) in order to minimize air temperature at the combustor inlet, and at the maximum turbine inlet temperature in order to maximize exergetic eciency and consequently minimize CO2 emissions. The latter eect prevails on
the high specic NOx formation resulting from high turbine inlet temperature.
5.4. Eect of the economic objective on the three-objective optimal surface (Pareto front)
The third optimization run was performed using the second objective function of Eq. (4) as
the economic objective and / 0:64. The surface of the Pareto front found by the algorithm is
shown in Fig. 8, and the corresponding Pareto optimal set and the projections of the Pareto
front are shown in Fig. 9. In addition to the obvious increase in total costs for the Pareto optimal solutions, due to the addition of pollution damage costs to the economic objective function,

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Fig. 8. Optimal values of the three objective functions (Pareto front) using the second objective function of Eq. (4) as
the economic objective and / 0:64.

the coordinates of the solutions in the exergetic and environmental objectives remain unaltered.
Only a slight modication appears comparing the fronts in Figs. 6 and 8, located around the
economic minimum. In this zone, the shift of points forming the border of the Pareto front
along the total cost axis is enhanced by the high pollution level, so other solutions are found
having a much lower environmental impact for the same exergetic eciency and total cost,
excluding the former from the Pareto optimal set. In particular, the solution of the original
CGAM problem is no longer the economic minimum and does not belong to the Pareto front.
On the other hand, the economic minimum found using the second objective function of Eq. (4)
(total cost rate 0.47 $/s for f 0:5093) still corresponds to a peak in the environmental objective function because of the low pressure ratio and the high air preheater eectiveness.
6. Remarks and conclusions
The decision-making process in energy system design is usually driven by economic considerations, although several other aspects are involved. When the analysis only takes into account

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1155

Fig. 9. (a) and (d) optimal values of the decision variables (Pareto optimal set) (b), (c) and (e) projections of the
Pareto front in Fig. 8, using the second objective function of Eq. (4) as the economic objective and / 0:64.

an economic objective, no doubt exists about the optimal design choice. The reason for performing a two-objective energetic and economic analysis was already discussed in [21], where a
Pareto front curve was identied and a subset of optimal solutions was selected, featuring
higher eciencies at the expense of a reasonable increase in total cost. All these solutions are
optimal and worth considering, enlarging the spectrum of possible design choices. The designer
may accept small increases in costs over the economic minimum and still guarantee optimal
conditions under possible increases in market resource prices.
The need for quantifying the environmental impact leads to the introduction of pollution
related costs in the economic objective function and/or to the inclusion of pollution damage
costs as a separate objective. The rst option modies the curve of the Pareto front in the exergetic eciencytotal costs plane and consequently the subset of possible design choices but
does not alter the nature of the solution of the two-objective optimization problem. Conversely,

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A. Lazzaretto, A. Toolo / Energy 29 (2004) 11391157

the second option, adopted in this paper, requires that a three-objective optimization problem
be solved. A surface of Pareto optimal solutions is obtained in the exergetic eciencytotal
costsenvironmental impact space; and, accordingly, the number of possible design choices is
further enlarged. Starting from the former two-objective Pareto front curve, which is one of the
borders of this surface, the designer can move towards a wide spectrum of solutions having
lower levels of environmental impact (converging to the environmental impact minimum). It
was observed that solutions around the economic minimum are associated with a steep increase
in the environmental impact objective, even when pollution damage costs are included in the
economic objective. Thus, if the design choice is guided by mere economic considerations, it
may not be a good choice in the connes set by limits imposed by environmental regulation.

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