An approach to potential environmental impact reduction in chemical reaction processes

An approach to identify environmental impact reduction alternatives is presented for chemical reaction processes. The primary tools used in this approach are potential environmental impact (PEI) reaction scheme and PEI change due to reaction. A PEI reaction scheme can be used to visualize the transformation relationships among different types of PEI, and can be applied to aid in identifying the sources of environmental impacts and generating alternatives for reducing the impacts. PEI change due to reaction can be used to indicate the change in PEI when this reaction proceeds by one mole of reaction. With the aid of the PEI reaction scheme and the PEI change due to reaction as well as some heuristics, the chemicals and reactions responsible for the potential impacts in the various impact categories can be identified and environmental impact reduction alternatives for a reaction process can be derived. The environmental performance of each alternative is evaluated by doing a quantitative PEI balance. In the case study, the alternatives, which can reduce the output of PEI and the magnitudes of the fresh feeds as well as increase the selectivity of the product, are obtained by using the approach.