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A METHODOLOGY TO EVALUATE PROCESS SUSTAINABILITY
Citation:
Gonzalez*, M A. AND R L. Smith*. A METHODOLOGY TO EVALUATE PROCESS SUSTAINABILITY. Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy. American Society of Chemical Engineering (AIChE), New York, NY, 22(4):269-276, (2003).
Description:
Chemical and engineering research over the past five years has seen a dramatic increase in activity in the area of green chemistry. As these developments continue to be explored, it is reasonable that some of these chemistries or technologies have the potential to be implemented on the plant scale. With this in mind, a new green process will most certainly have a potential impact on the sustainability of a process. It should also be noted that although a "green" technology may appear environmentally friendly of sustainable, there currently if no all-inclusive methodology for assessing the actual sustainability of the chemical reaction or process. In order to assess a process, a set of sustainability indicators, or metrics, are required.
Research within the USEPA has laid the foundation for an indicator model, GREENSCOPE (Gauging Reaction Effectiveness for the ENvironmental Sustainability of Chemistries with a multi-Objective Process Evauator), that evaluates a particular reaction or process for its sustainability in the following areas: Environment, Energy, Efficiency, and Economics. These four E's provide a quantitative definition of process sustainability and allow for a direct comparison between two similar processes with differing reaction chemistries or process technologies. These aspects of sustainable chemical research will also be of importance as bench processes are scaled up, so that these same improvements can be realized as sustainable industrial processes.