Coupling life cycle assessment with process simulation for ecodesign of chemical processes

Morales-Mendoza, Luis Fernando; Azzaro‐Pantel, Catherine; Belaud, Jean‐Pierre; Ouattara, Adama

doi:10.1002/ep.12723

Cited by 19 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 57 publications

(77 reference statements)

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“…Process simulation tools such as Aspen Plus, Aspen HYSYS, UniSim, and CHEMCAD are “bottom-up” representations of chemical plants and are regularly used for generating data for chemicals in a life-cycle assessment in individual cases when detailed process data is available. − Furthermore, simulation models have been coupled with life-cycle impact assessment results or other sustainable metrics in order to compare alternative process routes or process parameters. − Others have presented detailed procedures for using process simulation tools in combination with other methods for generating detailed LCIs. , However, using process simulation for generating chemical LCI data requires knowledge of chemical process design principles, process details with operation parameters for various unit operations used, and expertise in one of the process simulation tools. In the absence of any of these, an LCA practitioner is limited to using results from LCI databases of individual case studies or resorting to one of the basic estimation methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation-Based Estimates of Life Cycle Inventory Gate-to-Gate Process Energy Use for 151 Organic Chemical Syntheses

Parvatker

Eckelman

2020

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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Process energy data is integral to the sustainability analysis of chemical products and processes. However, due to the lack of primary data from chemical plants, process energy calculations in chemical life-cycle inventories (LCIs) often rely primarily on empirical averages, estimations based on proxy processes, or the industrial chemistry literature. In this study, we demonstrate a streamlined process simulation-based methodology to estimate energy consumption in chemical manufacturing when the data availability for the process is limited. The methodology is applied to 151 different chemical processes using Aspen Plus to estimate their gate-to-gate process energy use, representing the largest such simulation-based LCI data set to date. Further, pinch analysis used for process heat integration and specification of different utility types for each of the chemical processes enhance the representativeness of the LCI data. The total heating requirement for chemicals assessed ranges from 0.1 to 24 MJ/kg with an average of 3.1 MJ/kg product, while the average cooling requirement before heat integration is 4.5 MJ/kg. More than half of the total energy requirement comes from the separation section. Steam is the most used hot utility in the chemical industry which reflects in the simulation results, accounting for 70% of the heating requirements, while air and cooling water accounts for 40% of the cold utilities used. The engineering design-based estimates reported here represent a substantial addition to chemical LCI data and can provide a strong foundation for future predictive models for the large chemical universe.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation-Based Estimates of Life Cycle Inventory Gate-to-Gate Process Energy Use for 151 Organic Chemical Syntheses

Parvatker

Eckelman

2020

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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“…The LCA model of the plasma‐assisted, conventional and renewable hydrogen‐based ammonia syntheses has been developed in the Umberto NXT LCA software (ifu Hamburg GmbH, 2017) employing the inventory dataset of the Ecoinvent v3.3, presented in Table S1 in Supporting Information. In the absence of experimental data on a novel chemical process, the use of process modeling and simulation is a common approach to obtaining the required inventory data for an ex‐ante life cycle assessment (Axelsson et al., 2012; Kralisch, Ott, & Gericke, 2015; Morales‐Mendoza, Azzaro‐Pantel, Belaud, & Ouattara, 2018; Righi, Baioli, Dal Pozzo, & Tugnoli, 2018). In the context of this LCA study, foreground data for the material and energy flows of the examined chemical processes have been extracted from process simulations conducted in ASPEN Plus software, (Aspen Technology, Inc., 2020)—a detailed description is provided in Supporting Information—and are presented in Table 1.…”

Section: Methodology and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impact assessment of plasma‐assisted and conventional ammonia synthesis routes

Anastasopoulou

Keijzer

Patil

et al. 2020

J of Industrial Ecology

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The importance of ammonia in the fertilizer industry has been widely acknowledged over the past decades. In view of the upcoming increase of world population and, in turn, food demand, its production rate is likely to increase exponentially. However, considering the high dependence on natural resources and the intensive emission profile of the contemporary ammonia synthesis route, as well as the rigid environmental laws being enforced at a global level, the need to develop a sustainable alternative production route becomes quite imperative. A novel approach toward the synthesis of ammonia has been realized by means of non-thermal plasma technology under ambient operating conditions. Because the given technology is still under development, carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA) is highly recommended as a means of identifying areas of the chemical process that could be potentially improved for an enhanced environmental performance. For that purpose, in the given research study, a process design for a small-scale plasma-assisted ammonia plant is being proposed and evaluated environmentally for specific design scenarios against the conventional ammonia synthesis employing steam reforming and water electrolysis for hydrogen generation. On the basis of the LCA results, the most contributory factor to the majority of the examined life cycle impact categories for the plasma-assisted process, considering an energy efficiency of 1.9 g NH 3 /kWh, is the impact of the power consumption of the plasma reactor with its share ranging from 15% to 73%. On a comparative basis, the plasma process powered by hydropower has demonstrated a better overall environmental profile over the two benchmark cases for the scenarios of a 5% and 15% NH 3 yield and an energy recovery of 5% applicable to all examined plasma power consumption values.

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“…The HDA process involves four main operations: the cleaning and mixing section at the inlet, the reaction system, the vapor recovery system (hydrogen recycling system), and the liquid separation [10]. The HDA process involves two reactions, the conversion of toluene to benzene as below [11]:…”

Section: Hydrodealkylationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benzene Purity Improvement and Feed Amount Reduction on Benzene Production

Owena,

Loeharja,

Hardani

et al. 2024

J. Chem. Eng. Res. Prog.

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Global demand for benzene is expected to rise significantly. Previous research focused on extracting toluene from water, but a proposed shift towards preventive measures includes recycling toluene to avoid pollution and enhance benzene production. Emphasis on addressing separation ratios and material balance is crucial for successful simulations. Proposed innovations involve added splitters and shortcut columns for enhanced purity. Benzene production could be gained through the process of hydrodealkylation with some modifications. It shows the significant difference of the purity of benzene produced with the use of splitter and shortcut column compared to not using splitter and shortcut column. The recycling process effects the mass flow of the compound which picture the capability of a process to scale up. Through recycling the toluene, it also happens to cut or push the sum of the feed which leads the process to be more economical. Based on the modification of the benzene production it is resulted that the mass flow rate of the benzene production is significantly increased from 38.6 kg/h to 430.72 kg/h which gives possibility of the production to be higher in one go. Recycling toluene and hydrogen will also help the effectivity and efficiency of the process by its quality and specifically its quantity of the fresh feed. The modification also affects the purities of the benzene from 70.72% to 99.95%. Therefore, by doing the modification it will produce greater number of benzene with its high purities. Copyright © 2024 by Authors, Published by Universitas Diponegoro and BCREC Publishing Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

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Coupling life cycle assessment with process simulation for ecodesign of chemical processes

Cited by 19 publications

References 57 publications

Simulation-Based Estimates of Life Cycle Inventory Gate-to-Gate Process Energy Use for 151 Organic Chemical Syntheses

Simulation-Based Estimates of Life Cycle Inventory Gate-to-Gate Process Energy Use for 151 Organic Chemical Syntheses

Environmental impact assessment of plasma‐assisted and conventional ammonia synthesis routes

Benzene Purity Improvement and Feed Amount Reduction on Benzene Production

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