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DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY CHEMICAL PROCESSES
Citation:
Smith*, R L. DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY CHEMICAL PROCESSES. Presented at Invited Lecture Lehigh Univ. Dept. Chemical Engrg, Bethlemen, PA, 10/25/2000.
Description:
The design of a chemical process involves many aspects: from profitability, flexibility and reliability to safety to the environment. While each of these is important, in this work, the focus will be on profitability and the environment. Key to the study of these aspects is the time at which design decisions are made. Early decisions are more easily integrated into designs, while later changes normally lead to end of pipe solutions. Thus, this work emphasizes the very initial stages of design, considering aspects of byproduct and waste production, and their effects on costs and environmental impacts.
Potential environmental impacts are evaluated through the use of the Waste Reduction Algorithm, also known as WAR. WAR permits one to focus on streams entering and exiting a process, to evaluate a potential impact balance around the process, and to compare design alternatives. The impact categories of WAR include potential toxicities for human, aquatic, and terrestrial life as well as global warming, ozone depletion, and others. Through impact scores for many chemicals in each category, WAR can balance the effects of a small amount of a very toxic chemical with a large amount of a slightly global warming one, for example. By implementing the WAR algorithm during the early stages of process design, one can have a large effect on the overall environmental friendliness of a process.