Description
Sustainability has recently gained wider interest in process systems engineering (PSE). As a result, intensive research effort is currently being devoted towards the incorporation of environmental criteria in the decision-making process. This general trend has motivated the development of systematic strategic for quantifying and minimizing the environmental impact of process industries (Grossmann and Guillen Gosalbez , 2010). Nevertheless, the core idea of sustainable chemical processes design is not new. In fact, the concept of implementing pollution prevention techniques into process design dates back to the 1990s. Where, El-Halwagi and Manousiouthakis (1990) focused on minimizing the energy consumption by applying methods for heat and power integration. Although these techniques led to significant environmental improvements, they still had a rather limited scope. It was not until now when it appears a clear demanding to the scientific community to develop systematic tools to achieve reductions in the production costs as well as the associated environmental impact in order to develop decision support tools for the sustainable design of chemical plants. Most of the books in chemical process design published until the date are focused exclusively in improving the profitability or the costs of the plant. Douglas (1988), presented a systematic procedure for the conceptual design of chemical processes. Following this pioneering work, Baasel (1990) introduced planning, optimization, and sophisticated computer programs techniques for chemical process design. In 1997, Biegler et al. (1997) published a book with several systematic methods for chemical process design, this is one of the main references in the area of PSE. In the 2000s, many authors prepared some books presenting new strategies for the optimal design of chemical processes. Edgar (2001), presented some optimization techniques for chemical processes improvements. Himmelblau (2003) recuperated the basic principles and calculations in chemical engineering. Turton et al. (2003) presented the analysis, synthesis and design of chemical processes. Smith 2005 presented methods for the design and integration, and Dimian and Bildea (2008) published a book titled Chemical Process Design. These are some of the most remarkable books in the area of chemical process design; however there are many more since this is one of the most important areas of study in the engineering.
Contents:
1 Sustainable Process Engineering
2 Pharmaceutical Processes
3 Thermodynamic Cycles
4 Biofuel Production
5 Chemical Plants
6 Conclusions
List of Tables
1 Pareto extreme results of the multi-objective optimization of penicillin V production
plant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2 Cost correlations used in the Rankine cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3 Cost correlations used in the absorption cooling cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4 Details of the extreme solutions. Case study I: Rankine cycle . . . . . . . . 61
5 Extreme solutions. Case study I: Rankine cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
6 Details of the extreme solutions. Case study II: Absorption cycle . . . . . . 63
7 Extreme solutions. Case study II: Absorption cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
8 Steam energy loads of the biodiesel production plant . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
9 Steam energy loads of the bioethanol production plant . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
10 Capital costs summary of the benzene production process . . . . . . . . . . . 97
11 Operating costs summary of biodiesel production process . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12 Executive economic summary of biodiesel production process . . . . . . . . . 97
13 Capital costs summary of the bioethanol production process . . . . . . . . . 102
14 Operating costs summary of the bioethanol production process . . . . . . . . 103
15 Executive economic summary of the bioethanol production process . . . . . . 103
