Designing Sustainable Processes

Session Chair:

• Kishori Deshpande, The Dow Chemical Company

Session Description:

sus·tain·able  

adjective \sə-ˈstā-nə-bəl\

: able to be used without being completely used up or destroyed

: involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources

: able to last or continue for a long time

Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

As the world’s population rises and new economies emerge, society requires novel solutions to meet its most basic needs, including energy, water, housing, food, health, and transportation. However, limited natural resources entail their efficient use while simultaneously enhancing the quality of life of current and future generations. Consequently, the need for sustainable process design and alternative reaction routes to reduce industry’s impact on the environment has gained vital importance. This session will cover topics on designing sustainable processes for energy efficient chemical processing. Both, experimental and modeling, submissions are encouraged. 

Schedule:

Abstracts:

Process Intensification - Opportunities and Challenges for Reaction Engineering

Process Intensification (PI) promises new pathways to reducing industry’s impact on the environment by improving process mass and energy efficiencies (thereby reducing waste and conserving energy) as well as reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in many cases. In this talk, I will review recent chemical reaction engineering (CRE) innovations for PI and review our research over the past decade in developing new PI strategies and technologies in the area of chemical reactor design for natural gas processing.

PI strategies based upon the coupling of separations and catalytic reaction enable breakthroughs in reaction yields via overcoming thermodynamic limitations; when applied to hydrogen production from natural gas, catalytic membrane and sorption-enhanced reformer processes (SERP) additionally provide simultaneous CO2 removal for subsequent sequestration. This talk will highlight our work in identifying optimal catalyst configurations for achieving significant breakthroughs in membrane reactor performance and the extension of these design rules to SERP catalyst designs.

PI strategies based upon the integration of multiple unit operations within a single, compact device enables the creation of “smart” chemical processes and mobile natural gas processing stations based upon interchangeable process components. Microreactors have been widely accepted as an enabling technology for achieving this goal; however there remains several barriers to their acceptance in industry. This talk will emphasize recent efforts to reduce device cost via new manufacturing approaches, and the importance of steady-state robustness and dynamic stability of microreactors when applied to arguably their most promising application today – the monetization of stranded natural gas.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Chemical Industry on the Way to More Sustainable Processes

An overview of some of the major challenges facing the chemical industry and some of the potential opportunities for moving forward will be discussed. The perspective presented will be from the perspective of the chemical process industry (CPI). Areas for potential breakthrough and areas of discontinuity in understanding of the impact that the CPI can have will be discussed.

Concept to Commercialization: Methodology to Sustainable Process Success

The commercialization of new technologies often face tremendous hurdles; making commercialization of sustainable technology a rare feat that is the result of thorough planning and execution.  This talk will highlight the methodology of sustainable process design through the experience of a recent successful implementation of new emission reduction/recovery technology.  It will discuss the role of demonstrating the process at the pilot plant level to overcome the biggest hurdles, minimize risk and explore alternative designs to ensure the process is truly sustainable.  Pilot plants allow closing of the recycle loops and heat interchangers, completion of the material balances and validation of unique energy minimization tactics.  They can also allow extended runs to study by-product reactions and corrosion rates.  Pilot plants have their own limits and process simulations are still utilized to predict unit operation performance.  Economical alternatives should be explored and constantly validated against the current capital and operating costs throughout the project.  This talk will highlight the experiences of taking a sustainable process from concept to lab to pilot plant to commercialization.    This sustainable process reduces materials by incorporating recycle loops of a long life green sorbent, reduces consumables, reduces/eliminates emissions, reduces wastes, minimizes energy and further captures gas pollutants to be recycled which increases product yield of the main processing plant.   The methodology discussed applies for all scale ups, but is especially needed for sustainable processes where robustness must be proven.