New Environmentally-Conscious Design Approach and Evaluation Tool for Chemical Processes

摘要

This work develops a set of assessment tools for the environmental evaluation of chemical processes and proposes an approach that integrates environmental perceptions into design. A new environmental indicator based on the materials flows between the process and environment is developed. The Material Balance Environmental Index (MBEI) includes toxicities and their environmental implications. Global and categorized environmental indices are computed following three levels of aggregation, and several categories of environmental concerns. Furthermore, a ternary diagram is proposed to graphically show the environmental performance and the individual contribution of the different categories (i.e. ecosystem quality, natural resources and human health) in the total impact. The methodology is tested using the formaldehyde process as case study, where data are obtained from rigorous process simulation validated with industrial data.