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The availability of high speed parallel computers and process simulators capable of rigorous flowsheet calculation has given way to new methodologies for the optimization of chemical processes. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs), derived from biological adaptation paradigms, have proven to be a powerful and robust optimizing technique even for structural optimization problems. We have adopted this method for constrained mixed-integer and structural process optimizations and therefore developed EA-Modules with an interface to the ASPEN PLUS simulation system, thereby combining the evolutionary optimization with the simulator’s detailed process models and algorithms for realistic cost target function calculations. The method has been applied successfully to typical test problems, such as heat exchanger network and distillation sequence synthesis and even the optimization of whole processes.