Modern society is living in an age of paradigm changes. In part, these changes have been driven by new technologies, which provide high performance computing capabilities that enable the creation of complex Artificial Intelligence systems. Those developments are allowing the emergence of new Cyber Systems where the continuously generated data is utilized to build Artificial Intelligence models used to perform specialized tasks within the system. While, on one hand, the isolated application of the cyber systems is becoming widespread, on the other hand, their synchronical integration with other cyber systems to build a concise and cognitive structure that can interact deeply and autonomously with a physical system is still a completely open question, only addressed in some works from a philosophical point of view. From this standpoint, the AI can play an enabling role to allow the existence of these cognitive CPSs. This review provides a look at some of the aspects that will be crucial in the development of cyber-physical systems, focusing on the application of artificial intelligence to confer cognition to the system. Topics such as control and optimization architectures and digital twins are presented as components of the CPS. It also provides a conceptual overview of the impacts that the application of these technologies might have in the chemical industry, more specifically in the purification of methane.

This work presents a novel approach for multiobjective optimization problems, extending the concept of a Pareto front to a new idea of the Pareto region. This new concept provides all the points beyond the Pareto front, leading to the same optimal condition with statistical assurance. This region is built using a Fisher–Snedecor test over an augmented Lagragian function, for which deductions are proposed here. This test is meant to provide an approximated depiction of the feasible operation region while using meta-heuristic optimization results to extract this information. To do so, a Constrained Sliding Particle Swarm Optimizer (CSPSO) was applied to solve a series of four benchmarks and a case study. The proposed test analyzed the CSPSO results, and the novel Pareto regions were estimated. Over this Pareto region, a clustering strategy was also developed and applied to define sub-regions that prioritize one of the objectives and an intermediary region that provides a balance between objectives. This is a valuable tool in the context of process optimization, aiming at assertive decision-making purposes. As this is a novel concept, the only way to compare it was to draw the entire regions of the benchmark functions and compare them with the methodology result. The benchmark results demonstrated that the proposed method could efficiently portray the Pareto regions. Then, the optimization of a Pressure Swing Adsorption unit was performed using the proposed approach to provide a practical application of the methodology developed here. It was possible to build the Pareto region and its respective sub-regions, where each process performance parameter is prioritized. The results demonstrated that this methodology could be helpful in processes optimization and operation. It provides more flexibility and more profound knowledge of the system under evaluation.