Environmental sustainability analysis

ICI Acrylics believes that greater cooperation between companies and a revised approach to life cycle analysis are the keys to the industry s future environmental sustainability. The company has invested over 2m pounds sterling in an on-going monomer recovery project, which encompasses a joint research programme with Mitsubishi Rayon. The project focuses on increasing the efficiency of acrylic depolymerisation and overcoming technical issues such as its use in recycling flame retardant acrylics. ICI ACRYLICS... 

A broader and more detailed evaluation can be done by performing a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The central idea of a LCA is that the environmental effects during the entire life cycle of a process are quantified. These environmental effects are caused by the use of fossil fuels for heating and production of electricity, the use of non-renewable raw materials for the production of materials and chemicals, and the emissions of pollutants to air, water and soil. These environmental effects can be subdivided further in various levels of detail. The five major effects mentioned are derived from the more general effects considered in the framework of the LCA. Based on the environmental sustainability of each of the complete treatment scenarios considered as technically feasible, a ranking according environmental... 

Evaluate life cycle analysis of chemical emissions, utilize proper system analysis tools—numerical models, and propose the right economic development solutions for environmental sustainability... 

Ahmad Abrishamchi (water resources and environmental systems analysis and management), Chairholder, UNESCO Chair in Water and Environment Management for Sustainable Cities Department of Civil Engineering, Sharif University of Technology (SUT), Tehran... 

Step 6. Sustainability analysis with respect to resources consumption and environmental impact... 

Optimal processing paths with sustainability and environmental impact analysis... 

The presented framework has been integrated with the sustainability and environmental impact assessment. Both sustainability and environmental impact analysis are performed using two in-honse software tools, SustainPro (Carvalho et al., 2013) and LCSoft (Kalakul et al., 2014), respectively. As a prerequisite for this step, some extra data are needed such as rigorous mass and energy balance, connectivity among the unit operations within the flowsheet, duty, and reaction data which are explained in more detail in the following text. 

Sustainability Analysis with Respect to Resource Consumption and Environmental Impact... 

Step 6 Sustainability analysis with respect to resource consumption and environmental impact In this section, the two highest ranking optimal processing paths identified with respect to the techno-economical metrics presented in Figures 1.9 and 1.10 were selected for further analysis with respect to the following sustainability metrics, resource consumption and enviromnental impact, using two software tools, SustainPro and LCSoft, respectively. 

In summary, the framework presented is a promising tool to represent the ever-increasing number of biorefinery alternatives with their competing technologies and routes and help evaluate them at their optimality for early-stage design and analysis purposes in terms of techno-economic analysis. Sustainability analysis and environmental impact assessment are included in the framework which enables a more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the biorefinery alternatives. The framework helps formulate a multicriteria evaluation (techno-economic, environmental impact, and sustainability analysis) of the biorefinery concept. 

The integration of the sustainability and environmental impact analysis to the framework provides a more comprehensive decision making and multicriteria evaluation to enable the users to screen for economic but sustainable biorefmery concepts early on in the project development life cycle. 

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