(269e) Methodological Study on Sustainability Assessment and Selection of New Technologies for Process Performance Improvement

Technology assessment is of utmost importance when choosing new technologies. Traditionally, technology assessment focuses on mostly the technological performance and economic benefits. With a great push towards creating a more environmentally friendly future and the rapid advancement of technologies, it is imperative to have a systematic methodology for evaluating comprehensive sustainability performance improvement of new technologies. It is of particular importance to stakeholders that the technology used is economically feasible, to the environment that waste in any form could be minimized in the first place, and to the workforce and people that it does not create problems such as health and safety risks.

In this paper, we will introduce a methodology for assessing new technologies in their early development stage. The methodology consists of three major functions that are developed for (1) integrated sustainability and technical performance assessment, (2) human-machine interacted technology analysis, and (3) goal-bearing technology improvement recommendation and impact analysis. The identified technologies will be comprehensively analyzed for their capacities in the improvement of process design and operational performance, as compared with known technologies. We will present a mathematical framework for each of the three major functions and discuss uncertainty impact and processing methods. We will demonstrate the methodological efficacy through an applied study on designing and operating a plant-wide chemical and water use network system in an electroplating plant with multiple plating lines for different surface coating applications.