A novel impact assessment tool, the “SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR” has been developed for evaluating processes for sustainability. Traditionally, engineers designed processes to meet economic goals; however, with the awareness of sustainability, engineers are now considering other constraints such as resource usage, environmental impacts, social benefits, and economics. This tool applies selected metrics that address economic, environmental, and health and safety concerns. The SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR is a Microsoft Excel–based tool that uses mass and energy flows as inputs to evaluate the sustainability of a process. This impact assessment tool equips the process designer with a framework to design industrial processes for sustainability. The objective is for process designers to use the results generated from the tool to assess and improve the sustainability of a process. The ultimate goal in every industrial process is to maximize profits; thus, a process is not sustainable if it is not economically viable. Thus, this study introduces a methodology that involves addressing economical concerns by completing a profitability analysis, addressing environmental concerns by using a set of selected environmental metrics, and addressing social concerns by completing a health and safety risk analysis. The SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR has been demonstrated by the dimethyl ether (DME) process. In this work, two options for producing DME are compared and then the most sustainable option is selected. Lastly, the results obtained from the SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR are validated with the Environmental Protection Agency's Waste Reduction Algorithm. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 32: 749–761, 2013
The perception of how sustainability issues should be addressed in design has changed over time. It is no longer appropriate to evaluate processes for economic feasibility alone; social benefits and environmental impacts must be considered. Addressing sustainability concerns after the fact in chemical process design is no longer acceptable as this could result in more expensive consequences. Hence, we introduce a methodology for incorporating sustainability concerns into early stages of process design. The proposed framework involved the use of ASPEN PLUS to simulate processes, calculate mass and energy balances, complete sensitivity analysis and lastly optimize processes. The base case and optimized processes are evaluated with the SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR, a newly developed impact assessment tool. An overall sustainability impact, which has been incorporated into the SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATOR, was developed to quantify sustainability issues in process design. The methodology was demonstrated on the acrylonitrile process. The application of the methodology on this process resulted in a more economic, environmental, and socially acceptable process. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 32: 762–776, 2013
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