Intelligent system for sustainable chemical process design and operations

Abstract

The drive towards sustainability has compelled the chemical process industries to implement the concept of sustainable development as part of their core business values. This research work proposes a systematic framework for synthesizing waste minimization analysis to generate sustainable alternatives to chemical processes. Herein lies the novelty of the work - the various qualitative and quantitative methodologies, which have been traditionally considered in isolation, are combined in an integrated manner by capitalizing on their complementary strengths. The qualitative waste minimization methodologies including hierarchical design procedure and ENVOP technique are invoked through three fundamentals: P-graph, cause-and-effect, and functional knowledge. The quantitative approaches including process simulation, wastewater minimization, production scheduling, heat integration and multi-objective optimization provide precise alternatives to the plants. An intelligent system that implements the framework is also proposed. Its application to different industrial case studies involving continuous and batch processes is illustrated and the results obtained are discussed.