Sustainable Chemical Processes and Products

SUSTAINABLE CHEMICAL PROCESSES AND PRODUCTS: NEW DESIGN METHODOLOGY AND DESIGN TOOLS The current chemical industry is not sustainable, which leads to the fact that innovation of chemical processes and products is too often hazardous for society in general and the environment in particular. It really is a challenge to implement sustainability considerations in the design activities of chemical engineers. Therefore, the main question of this thesis is: how can a trained chemical engineer develop a conceptual design of a chemical process or a chemical product in such a way that the final result clearly contributes to sustainable development? This question is answered after a profound discussion about the current chemical engineering practice and its relation to the sustainability debate. This dissertation claims that sustainable development of chemical engineering practices requires a general design methodology accompanied by a set of design tools. Such a combination of methodology and tools does not exist in the chemical engineering field. The author developed a new design methodology and seven new design tools that enable the incorporation of sustainability issues into the design practice of the chemical engineering field. The application and validity of the methodology and its tools are shown in seven, mainly industrial, case studies. Delft, April 2004, Gijsbert Korevaar

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