Achieving More Sustainable Designs through a Process Synthesis-Intensification Framework

More sustainable process designs refer to design alternatives that correspond to lowervalues of a set of targeted performance criteria. In this paper, a multi-level frameworkfor process synthesis-intensification that leads to more sustainable process designs ispresented. At the highest level of aggregation, process flowsheets are synthesized interms of a sequence of unit operations that correspond to acceptable values for a set oftargeted performance criteria. This defines the upper-bound of the performance criteriaand the design is called the base-case design. At the next lower level, tasks representingunit operations are identified and analysedin terms of means-ends to find moreflowsheet alternatives that improve the base-case design and correspond to lower valuesof the set of targeted performance criteria. Atthe lowest level, phenomena employed toperform the specific tasks areidentified and manipulated to find intensified operations,leading to more flowsheets that further improve the base-case design and correspond toeven lower values of the set of target performance criteria. An overview of theframework is presented together with a casestudy that highlights the key concepts andapplication work-flow.