The exergy concept is a well established way to express the quality of any kind of process stream, be it energy or matter. Thus detailed exergy analysis of chemical processes can in general be performed and several such applications have been reported in the literature. However, systematic methods for exergetic process optimisation only exist for the comparably less complex area of power systems. For chemical processes a;solid optimisation approach based on exergy analysis has yet to be derived. This paper presents a thorough investigation of opportunities and limitations of the exergy concept in both process optimisation and process synthesis. The two tasks are treated separately since their specific requirements and solution strategies are different. As a result of the presented evaluation, concepts for the efficient use of exergetic criteria are proposed.