A Novel Approach to the Optimal Design of Hybrid Waste-Recovery Processes

尽量减少危险废物是指减少在危险废物处理、储存或处置之前产生的危险废物。它是防止有害物质向环境释放的一种有效方法。处理尽量减少废物问题的有效方法是使用现场回收/再用分类网络。除了其有利的环境影响外，采用这种废物回收办法可以提供一种经济上有吸引力的废物管理办法。它可以节省大量能源和原材料，并可能从可出售的废物中获得收入。在美国各地，每年有超过2.5亿吨的危险废物在产生地点被处理，废物回收/再利用的提议正在成为一种理想的工业实践。这个项目的目标是设计一种新的方法来优化设计混合废物回收网络。这项任务涉及开发实用工具，以便系统地综合和筛选许多潜在的废物分离系统以及蒸馏和质量交换等更经典的系统。这个问题将被制定为一个最佳网络综合任务，其目标是尽量减少系统的年化总成本，同时实现所有指定的减少废物的职责。该公式嵌入了所有可能的过程选择，并提供了将此设计任务作为优化问题的工具。该问题的解决方案确定了用于给定废物回收任务的分离过程的最佳组合、安排、类型、大小和操作条件。这种方法将通过三个代表性的案例来阐明：渗透蒸发网络的合成、反渗透系统和反渗透-质量交换混合过程。

Hazardous-waste minimization means the reduction of hazardous waste that is generated prior to its treatment, storage or disposal. It represents an efficient method for preventing the release of hazardous substances to the environment. An effective way of tackling waste-minimization problems is through the use of on-site recycle/reuse separation networks. In addition to its favorable environmental impact, the adoption of this waste-recovery approach can provide an economically attractive waste-management alternative. It can lead to significant energy and raw-materials savings and possibly provide income from the salable wastes. With more than 250 million tons of hazardous wastes disposed of at the generating sites throughout the United States annually, the proposition of waste recycle/reuse is becoming a desirable industrial practice. The objective of this project is to devise a new methodology for the optimal design of hybrid waste-recovery networks. This task involves the development of practical tools for the systematic integration and screening of the numerous potential waste-separation systems as well as more classical ones such as distillation and mass exchange. The problem will be formulated as an optimal-network synthesis task with the objective of minimizing the total annualized cost of the system while achieving all the assigned waste-reduction duties. This formulation embeds all the potential process alternatives of interest and provides a tool for posing this design task as an optimization problem. The solution of this problem identifies the optimal combination, arrangement, types, sizes and operating conditions of the separation processes to be employed for a given waste-recovery task. This approach will be elucidated via three representative cases: the synthesis of pervaporation networks, reverse- osmosis systems, and reverse-osmosis-mass-exchange hybrid processes.