Design guidance for chemical processes using environmental and economic assessments

Traditionally, process design is focused on the selection of process technologies and optimization of chemical processes based on economic considerations. Increasingly, there is a need to broaden the scope of process design by including environmental impacts. To successfully optimize a process, multiple objective functions must be chosen to consider a variety of economic and environmental process attributes. The objective of this paper is to provide design procedures and guidance for optimizing chemical processes simultaneously based on economic and environmental aspects. Two chemical processes are studied, including a process to recover/recycle VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) from a gaseous waste stream and optimum heat-exchanger network design.