Retrofit design of a pharmaceutical batch process considering “green chemistry and engineering” principles

Abstract

Considering the capital intensive nature of the chemical industry, redesign of existing production plants is a strategic decision. In this study, retrofitting is performed using a systematic path flow decomposition method, enriching it with hazard assessment and life cycle analysis path flow indicators and proposing a classification scheme for coupling these new path flow indicators with relevant heuristics for process alternative generation. The developed methodology is applied in a batch production plant from the pharmaceutical industry. The method highlights solvent recovery or substitution as important retrofitting actions, generates diverse process layout structures to achieve this task and evaluates them from cost, hazard and life cycle assessment point of view. Extractive distillation using glycol as an entrainer is identified as the multiobjective optimal option for separating the THF/Water azeotrope with improvement up to 40% for the various objectives compared with a base case where the waste solvent is incinerated. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 3423–3440, 2015

Decision-Making for Sustainability Enhancement of Chemical Systems under Uncertainties: Combining the Vector-Based Multiattribute Decision-Making Method with Weighted Multiobjective Optimization Technique

“…In this step, the candidate technologies were suggested as feasible solutions for the sustainability enhancement, which are commonly provided by professional experts via the approaches like experience-based methods, experimental tests, and computer simulation, and so on. , Although this action relies heavily on the experts’ knowledge and experiences, a variety of tools ,, and guidelines , can be referred for systematically detecting the bottlenecks and then generating the possible retrofit technologies. In this study, the recommended technologies are decision variables, which can be directly defined as T j ( j = 1, 2, ..., m ), referring to the j th technology among a set of m recommendations.…”

“…Consequently, a variety of useful methods/tools have been developed for helping the decision makers to better understand the different sustainable enhancement alternatives. For instance, the process flow sheet decomposition-based methodology has been used for assessing the retrofitting actions of chemical systems. − Jayswal et al introduced a sustainability root cause analysis methodology for identifying the bottlenecks regarding the chemical processes and offering opportunities for their sustainability improvement. Liu and Huang proposed a generic framework for technology assessment and decision making for enhancing the sustainability of chemical systems.…”

Optimal Design and Synthesis of Sustainable Integrated Biorefinery for Pharmaceutical Products from Palm-Based Biomass

“…A comprehensive analysis on assessing and retrofitting the pharmaceutical process plants have been presented by Segawa et al (2016). The retrofitting a pharmaceutical process plant by considering the hazard assessment and life cycle analysis path flow indicators in a batch process is developed by Banimostafa et al (2015). To determine the profitability of pharmaceuticals production, there is a need for a proper estimation method to approximate the operating cost of each pharmaceutical product.…”