Eco-innovation in process engineering: Contradictions, inventive principles and methods

Abstract

Economic growth and ecological problems motivate industries to apply eco-friendly technologies and equipment. However, environmental impact, followed by energy and material consumption still remain the main negative implications of the technological progress in process engineering. Based on extensive patent analysis, this paper assigns more than 250 identified eco-innovation problems and requirements to 14 general eco-categories with energy consumption and losses, air pollution, and acidification as top issues. It defines primary eco-engineering contradictions, in case eco-problems appear as negative side effects of the new technologies, and secondary eco-engineering contradictions, if eco-friendly solutions have new environmental drawbacks. The study conceptualizes a correlation matrix between the eco-requirements for prediction of typical eco-contradictions on example of processes involving solids handling. Finally, it summarizes major eco-innovation approaches including Process Intensification in process engineering, and chronologically reviews 66 papers on eco-innovation adapting TRIZ methodology. Based on analysis of 100 eco-patents, 58 process intensification technologies, and literature, the study identifies 20 universal TRIZ inventive principles and sub-principles that have a higher value for environmental innovation. The presented research work belongs to the European project "Intensified by Design platform for the intensification of processes involving solids handling" (IbD, http://ibd-project.eu), funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 SPIRE programme.

Ecological Advanced Innovation Design Approach for Efficient Integrated Upstream and Downstream Processes

“…As the evaluation of the European PI Roadmap contains only 2 ecological parameters, the extended qualitative and quantitative assessment of the PI-technologies in Eco-AIDA will be performed with at least 14 ecological categories and 25 additional engineering criteria, such as energy consumption, air pollution, acidification, safety risks, chemical waste disposal, depletion of abiotic resources, toxicity, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, water pollution, solid waste, radioactivity, ozone layer depletion, raw material intensity and others. These eco-categories and engineering criteria have been identified by the authors through a comprehensive analysis of 200 patents and 58 process intensification technologies in the field of eco-innovation and process engineering as presented in detail in (Livotov et al, 2019c). Optionally, a combinatorial multiobjective optimization helps to find optimum between the evaluated process intensification solutions (Casner and Livotov, 2017 et al, 2015).…”

“…The inventive operators are sorted by their mean occurrence frequency in the analysed 100 eco-patents and 58 thermal PI operations. The selection and ranking method proposed by the authors is disclosed in (Livotov et al, 2019c). A thorough analysis of the TRIZ efficiency for process intensification is given in (Livotov et al, 2018): among other outcomes, the application of the proposed TRIZ inventive operators in 6 industrial case studies resulted in 230 ideas and 26 patentable value added design concepts.…”

“…A comparative study of strategy-and ideation-oriented eco-innovation tools is presented in (Tyl et al, 2014). A recent extensive literature review published by the authors (Livotov et al, 2019c) mentions in the field of eco-innovation in process engineering in the first place Green Process Engineering (Poux et al, 2016), Process Intensification (Boodhoo and Harvey, 2013), and Process Design for Sustainability (Azzaro-Pantel, 2015). Since 2000 the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving TRIZ (Altshuller, 1984;VDI 2016) has been applied for development of cleaner and eco-friendly production processes.…”

“…Other researchers proposed to apply TRIZ for the domain of ecoinnovation in the chemical industry (Ferrer et al, 2012), for environment-friendly cleaner manufacturing (Fresner et al, 2010) or for design of green products (Chen, 2002). The authors of this paper identify in their systematic review (Livotov et al, 2019c) 66 papers on eco-innovation methods using TRIZ elements or adaptions, published between 2000 and 2018. This review outlines that the ideation potential of classical TRIZ has been successfully tested in eco-design, but the analytical TRIZ tools for problem definition and identification of engineering contradictions such as Root-Conflict Analysis, Cause-Effect-Chain-Analysis, or Anticipatory Failure Identification seem to be still underestimated.…”

“…However, implementation of new technologies in process engineering often leads to additional technical and environmental problems (Benali and Kudra, 2008;Russo and Serafini, 2015). Moreover, even if new solutions propose an eco-friendly product design or process, additional environmental problems still can appear as negative side effects of obtained solutions, creating secondary eco-engineering contradictions (Livotov et al, 2019c). Applying or developing eco-friendly technologies may be a significant challenge for companies because it often requires the acquisition of new resources and competences (Calza et al, 2017).…”