Sustainability in the context of process engineering

Computational process design for sustainability using various available techniques is still limited to computer-aided design featuring process optimization of energy and material flow plus minimizing greenhouse gas emission and water conservation. Sustainable process demands more, such as minimizing the impacts from other harmful emissions, discharges, waste creation, economic, and societal impacts. We have proposed an overall sustainability footprint, which in theory represents impacts of a process on all three domains of sustainability. This perspective article provides a critical analysis of attaining sustainability by minimizing this sustainability footprint using impact data as indicators. We also propose the use of the integration of the sustainability footprint in the computer-aided process design itself, rather than checking the impacts after the data have been collected on actual process options designed ahead of the analyses.