Display omitted •Simulation of three different acetone-methanol separation processes.•Simulation of utility plants: cooling water and steam generation for more realistic results.•Development of eco-indicators: CO2 emissions, energy and water consumptions.•Eco-indicators lumping in a single index for global eco-efficiency comparison.•The energetically integrated process evidences the highest potential of sustainable design. The evaluation of environmental parameters of industrial processes plays a fundamental role in reducing not only their ecological impacts but also the costs associated with plant operations. In this regard, this work aims to evaluate, through eco-indicators and with the aid of computational simulation, the energy consumption, the CO2 emissions and the water consumption of three different acetone-methanol separation plants, namely, Pressure Swing Distillation, Conventional Extractive Distillation and Energetically Integrated Extractive Distillation. Said processes were compared to one another in terms of their environmental efficiencies by means of the Eco-efficiency Comparison Index (ECI) method, which demonstrated that the integrated process is the most ecologically friendly.