Integration of electroplating process design and operation for simultaneous productivity maximization, energy saving, and freshwater minimization

Electroplating industry annually produces numerous plated workpieces for U.S. pillar industries. However, it is also a major environment polluter in forms of wastewater, sludge, and spent solution. Thus, waste source reduction for the electroplating industry is a must. In practice, when productivity and energy use efficiency are also taken into account, the design and operation of an electroplating process become very complicated and need an in-depth study. In this paper, productivity maximization, energy saving, and freshwater/wastewater minimization are simultaneously addressed for the optimal design and operation of electroplating processes, which generates a triple-objective mixed-integer dynamic optimization (MIDO) model. The MIDO model is iteratively solved by a developed methodology to obtain the 3D Pareto frontier of the optimization problem, which provides important technical supports for the design and operation of electroplating processes. The efficacy has been demonstrated with a case study on an electroplating process. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd.