Waste minimization life cycle analysis

To the process designer, life-cycle analysis is useful because focusing exclusively on waste minimization at some point in the life cycle sometimes creates problems elsewhere in the cycle. The designer can often obtain useful insights by changing the boundaries of the system under consideration so that they are wider than those of the process being designed. 

Handbook of Green Chemistry and Technology, J. H. Clark and D. J. Macquarrie, Eds., Blackwell Publishing 2002, 540 pp., ISBN 0-632-05715-7. This collection of 22 review essays covers all the important areas of green chemistry, including environmental impact and life-cycle analysis, waste minimization, catalysts and their industrial applications, new synthesis methods, dean energy, and novel solvent systems. The chapters are well referenced and contain pertinent examples and case studies. 

Topics covered include life cycle analysis, identifying and prioritizing pollutants for industrial sites, selecting environmentally compatible materials, design of unit operations for waste minimization, and pollution prevention economics. 

In acquiring a chemical, it is important to do a life cycle analysis. All costs associated with the progress of each chemical through its lifetime at an institution must be considwed. The purchase cost is only the beginning the handling costs, human as well as financial, and the disposal costs must be taken into account as well. Without close attention to this aspect of managing chemicals in laboratories, orders are not likely to be minimized and unused chemicals can become a significant fraction of the laboratory s hazardous waste. 

Waste Minimization VIP The waste minimization VIP involves a formal process stream-by-stream analysis to identify ways to eliminate or reduce the generation of wastes or nonuseful streams within the chemical process itself For those streams not eliminated or converted to salable by-products, it provides the method for managing the resulting wastes. This VIP incorporates environmental requirements into the facility design and combines life cycle environmental... 

In other cases, waste minimization technologies can result in enhanced product quality. A continuous process data analysis system is one example. Rather than operator experience and intuition guiding when to cycle a process bath, computer analysis can be instituted to monitor key indicators of the process solution and automatically adjust the bath conditions. The result can be longer bath life, a more consistent product, and greater product engineer confidence (Dickinson 1995). 

Life cycle assessment involves an inventory analysis to provide information about the consumption of material and release of wastes from the point that raw material is obtained to make a product to the time of its ultimate fate, an impact analysis to consider the environmental and other impacts of the product, and an improvement analysis to determine the measures that can be taken to reduce impacts. A life cycle assessment gives a high priority to the choice of materials in a way that minimizes wastes. It considers which materials and whole components can be used or recycled. And it considers alternate pathways for manufacturing processes or, in the case of chemical manufacture, alternate synthesis routes. 

Ray, Chittaranjan, Ravi K. Jain, Bernard A. Donahue, and E. Dean Smith, Hazardous Waste Minimization Through Life Cycle Cost Analysis at Federal Faeilities, Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association, 49, 17-27 (1999). 

---