Chemical process industries cleaner technologies

In ODS, sulfur compounds present in fuels are oxidized to more polar sulfones / sulfoxides to facilitate their removal by solvent extraction or adsorption. Various oxidation systems have been reported in the literature for this transformation. Among these oxidants like hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and carboxylic acid as catalyst3"5. For the chemical industry, it becomes more and more important to develop cleaner technologies. Solvent extraction processes are used to separate sulfones / sulfoxides from oxidized fuels. These processes required suitable and selective solvents for separation of oxidized sulfur compounds from petroleum feedstocks. 

In conclusion, the chemical industry is going to be even more dramatically transformed in the future, and key advances will be made at the interface of chemistry and biology. Discovery and development of new environmentally beneficial catalyst and process technologies will be critical for the chemical industry to thrive in the United States. The new technologies will need to be relevant and have a positive impact on the earnings and competitiveness of the chemical industry. Advances in catalysis will be a key driver in the development of cleaner and more efficient chemical processes. Finally, breakthrough discoveries are likely to be the products of interdisciplinary work teams. 

Catalysis, an important scientific and technological area for the development of environmentally friendly chemical processes, which m turn form the basis for cleaner industnal development and are also the key elements for an industrial prevention approach New, less polluting processes together with the optimization of existing processes depend to a great extent on the improvement of catalyst performance m the heavy and fine chemical production lines with a direct impact on the quality and quantity of by-products or waste generated... 

Adhesion requires the use of a variety of compounds that may be safe, hazardous, flammable, or form hazardous waste. Table 13.5 provides a partial list of some of the more commonly used chemicals. There has been extensive collaboration between the industry and the governmental environmental protection agencies to reduce all emissions. For instance, the Design for Environment (DfE) program in the Environmental Protection Agency s (EPA) Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics has been a voluntary partnership with the industry to develop and distribute pollution prevention and environmental and human health risks on alternative chemicals, processes, and products. The DfE approach uses cleaner technologies... 

The chemical and technological aspects of lignin modification and utilization are discussed. Competition with petrochemicals does not, for a number of reasons, permit the commercial utilization of non-oil based products made from lignin. However, pressure from governments and the public for a cleaner environment and new pulping processes (organosolv processes) may inevitably result in full scale industrial use of lignin other than fuel within the not too distant future. 

In the bulk chemicals industry classical environmentally unacceptable processes have largely (but not completely) been supplanted by cleaner, catalytic alternatives. Indeed, catalytic oxidation [1] is the single most important technology for the conversion of hydrocarbon feedstocks (alkanes, alkenes and aromatics) to industrial chemicals (see Table 1). 

From the above description it should be evident that Clean technology involves both chemistry and chemical engineering. If industry is to develop the cleaner processes now being demanded we need to establish multidisciplinary teams at the conceptual stage. 

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