Aggregate/Weighted Global Sustainability and Exergy Metric for Assessing Emerging Transformation Technologies

Abstract

This work presents a novel procedure for the sustainability evaluation of emerging technologies through the inclusion of exergy-based indicators and the geometric mean formula. The basis of the method comes from the evaluation, prioritization, and assignation of weighting factors that might impact the overall sustainability of a chemical process. Therefore, the metric is based on extending the geometric mean to include associated impacts of an emerging or existing technology based on the sustainable design approach. The concept of weighting and aggregation into the evaluation of sustainability metrics, in this case, includes economic profitability, environmental impacts, safety aspects, and exergy performance to give a unified indicator that evaluates the amplified value gained from a higher performance from the evaluated metrics. Besides, this work verifies the outcomes provided by this approach, implementing a case study to produce chitosan from shrimp exoskeleton. Finally, novel and upcoming insights are discussed comparing performance obtained by implementing the presented metric and the outcomes generated using previously proposed sustainability indicators.

Technical Evaluation of a Levulinic Acid Plant Based on Biomass Transformation under Techno-Economic and Exergy Analyses

“…The overall reaction system involved synthesizing HMF as an intermediate in the first reactor; this substance is subsequently dehydrated to produce LA and formic acid. Through a side reaction, furfural is produced from xylose. , Figure displays the simulation process flowsheet diagram of the enzymatic hydrolysis and acid-catalyzed dehydration unit for LA production.…”

“…This means that Ex in depends on the process’s available resources. Consequently, a high quantity of Ex irr implicates that the system is not favorable using its resources, meaning into a high rate of exergy loss associated with waste streams (Ex waste ) or other mechanisms for losing exergy Table reports calculation formulas to estimate exergy flows of a system described in eq .…”

“…Exergy analysis involves evaluating how a plant efficiently uses its current resources (mass and energy) to accomplish the defined task (production) . In this regard, exergy analysis is directly related to resource conservation and sustainable operation in chemical process design, considering that it provides information about exergy outflows of a system traduced into irreversibilities . Previous research has involved addressing exergy analysis for assessing chemical processes toward a sustainability approach.…”

Sustainability Outlook of Thermochemical-Based Second-Generation Biofuel Production: Exergy Assessment

“…The GREEN-SCOPE approach was successfully combined with design principles and computer-aided process engineering to show the advantages of coupling these tools in chemical process sustainability [26]. Exergy performance metrics have also been used in sustainability evaluation, as separate indicators in multiple-indicator analyses [27] and in aggregated approaches [28]. Still, many of these studies have focused on indicator-based analysis, but have not included a comprehensive framework that embodies all the aligned stages from feedstock selection to sustainability evaluation, involving exergy assessment in the process.…”

Shaping Effective Practices for Incorporating Sustainability Assessment in Manuscripts Submitted to ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering: Biomaterials

“…These applications and associated systems can be subjected to a range of sustainability metrics, such as biodegradability/circular economy, energy conservation, health hazards, waste generation, life cycle assessment, and the overall cradle-to-grave implications when they are implemented in an application. For example, Meramo-Hurtado and González-Delgado recently proposed a systematic procedure using an aggregate/weighted sustainability metric to evaluate the production and application of materials using four key factors, i.e., environmental, economic, safety, and exergy …”