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DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC AND ENERGY EFFICIENT CHEMICAL PROCESSES
Citation:
Mata, T. M., R L. Smith*, D M. Young*, AND C. V. Costa. DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC AND ENERGY EFFICIENT CHEMICAL PROCESSES. Presented at Technological Choices for Sustainability, NATO ARW, Maribor, Slovenia, October 13-17, 2002, Maribor, SLOVENIA, October 13 - 17, 2002.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The design and improvement of chemical processes can be very challenging. The earlier energy conservation, process economics and environmental aspects are incorporated into the process development, the easier and less expensive it is to alter the process design. Process emissions, fugitive and open emissions, represent a lost of value and can cause negative effects on the environment. In this work different energy integration alternatives are considered in combination with evaluations of the process economics with emissions and of potential environmental impacts. The example studied is the hydrodealkylation (HDA) of toluene to produce benzene. The process economics and heat-exchanger network calculations have been described by Douglas (1988). To evaluate the potential environmental impacts of a process, the Waste Reduction (WAR) algorithm (Young and Cabezas, 1999) is used, including eight impact categories: human toxicity by ingestion and by dermal/inhalation routes, terrestrial toxicity, aquatic toxicity, photochemical oxidation, acidification, global warming and ozone depletion. This study examines the possible fugitive and open emissions from the HDA process, evaluates the potential environmental impacts and the process economics considering different energy integration alternatives. Results of this work show the tradeoffs between process economics, potential environmental impacts and energy integration, revealing where attention should be focused when designing a chemical process.
Douglas, J. M., Conceptual Design of Chemical Processes, McGraw-Hill, New York (1988).
Young, D. M. and H. Cabezas, "Designing Sustainable Processes with Simulation: The Waste Reduction (WAR) Algorithm," Comput. Chem. Eng., 23, 1477-1491 (1999).