Sustainable process systems cycle sustainability assessment

Since life cycle assessment (LCA) can be more than an environmental impact assessment approach, chapter Life Cycle Sustainabiftty Assessment A Holistic Evaluation of Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts discusses life cycle sustainabiftty assessment. This extends the holistic environmental LCA to account for the economic and social pillars of sustainabiftty. Lastly, chapter Embedding Sustainabiftty in Product and Process Development—The Role of Process Systems Engineers describes the practical role of process systems engineers in the implementation of sustainabiftty in product and process development. It shows some key aspects and tools that practitioners should take into account to design and develop more sustainable products and processes during material selection, process design, process and product modeling, and supply chain implications. 

For an assessment of the sustainability profile, it is not enough to look at laundry detergent surfactants in isolation the whole life-cycle has to be taken into account.In order to arrive at soundly based conclusions, the total washing process must be analyzed. To enable the findings for different systems to be compared, all results must be related to a functional unit e.g. the cleaning of 1 kg of laundry. A systematic analysis of the total process is then carried out in the context of a so-called life-cycle assessment (LCA), in which all the system s inputs and outputs are systematically recorded and assessed. ... 

The proper design criteria for a modem utility plant should include both environmental and economic requirements. In other words, not only the capital and operating costs of a utility plant but also the corresponding utility wastes must be minimised. The paper presents a systematic multicriteria process synthesis approach for designing sustainable and economic utility systems. The proposed approach enables the design engineer to systematically derive optimal utility systems which are economically sustainable and economic by embedding Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles within a multiple objective optimisation framework. It combines the merits of total site analysis, LCA, and multi-objective optimisation techniques... 

For each life-cycle phase, the hazards should be assessed and controlled. The earlier in the life cycle this is done, the cheaper it is to accomplish. An SMS is a sustainable management system that is built around this process. Section 4.2 will discuss this in detail. 

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