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An Integrated Tool for Rapid Assessment of Chemical Manufacture Emissions, Treatment, and Sustainability Performance
Citation:
Li, S., S. Agbleze, Gerardo J. Ruiz-Mercado, AND F. Lima. An Integrated Tool for Rapid Assessment of Chemical Manufacture Emissions, Treatment, and Sustainability Performance. AIChE Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, November 10 - 15, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Comprehensive tools encompassing the evaluation of chemical process emissions, treatment simulation, and environmental performance are yet to be developed. This abstract describes a further presentation on estimating releases of chemicals and their environmental impact evaluation when including the modeling of pollution control systems. Chemical releases may present unanticipated health risks that EPA and its Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics must evaluate, as described in the Toxic Substances Control Act. The overall evaluation may involve risk assessment, including evaluations of chemical releases, exposures, and hazards. This work is to support TSCA risk evaluation by means of rapid estimation of industrial chemical releases and management scenarios.
Description:
The design and assessment of chemical manufacturing processes have been aided by a variety of competitive tools that enable the comprehensive analysis and performance testing of both the steady and transient response of processes with different levels of complexity. However, comprehensive tools that encompass the evaluation of process emissions, treatment simulation, and sustainable plant performance are yet to be presented. In this contribution, the tools developed by the co-authors for simulating Pollution Control Units (PCUs) [1] and performing sustainability assessments, GREENSCOPE [2], are now combined for the first time. The PCUs allow for the simulation of several unit operations associated with emission treatment, e.g., flare unit, scrubber unit, etc. [1], while GREENSCOPE allows for performing sustainable analysis under four categories; Environmental, Mass, Energy, and Economic Efficiency. Each category has several unique metrics called indicators which provide insight into the performance of any process. The new tool will now allow for the analysis of scenarios including the impact of design and process configuration on the efficiency of the four categories, the impact of pollution control units on process economics, environmental sustainability, and industrial chemical releases. This work presents a unified software framework that provides the opportunity to simulate and perform emission control analysis, pollution control unit sizing and sustainability assessment which could be used to support risk evaluation during chemical manufacturing scenarios. References 1. Li S, Feliachi Y, Agbleze S, Ruiz-Mercado, G. J. Smith RL, Meyer DE, Gonzalez MA. A process systems framework for rapid generation of life cycle inventories for pollution control and sustainability evaluation. Clean Technol. Environ. Policy. 2018. Accepted. DOI: 10.1007/s10098-018-1530-6 2. Ruiz-Mercado GJ, Gonzalez MA, Smith RL. Sustainability indicators for chemical processes: III. biodiesel case study. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2013;52(20):6747–60.