LT: Environmental and Human Health Assessment Software for the Chemicals Manufacturing Industry

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9814504 Shonnard The chemical process industries have employed various pollution prevention methodologies in recent years emphasizing in-process reduction of waste generation via environmentally benign chemistry, material substitution and recovery/recycle of waste components. Most of these efforts have focused only on specific pollution reduction goals with emphasis on minimizing equipment and operating costs while attaining these goals. Unfortunately, focusing on single environmental endpoints neglects the reality that there are multiple environmental and human health impacts which are affected by process design optimization. The objective of this research, in an attempt to address these limitations, is to incorporate multiple environmental and human health considerations into chemical process designs using a methodology and software tool developed by the PI. The goal will be to illustrate how chemical process designs can change in response to different optimization targets. Targets will include traditional economic metrics of process performance, individual environmental impact indexes and cumulative weighted multiple environmental indexes. Specific research objectives are: (1) Incorporate an existing chemical process environmental assessment methodology and software tool to pinch analysis for VOC recovery from gaseous waste streams, (2) Demonstrate use of life-cycle assessment for substitute chemicals by applying to substitute refrigerants in the above case study, (3) Model the effects of property uncertainties on the pinch analysis study as they affect pollutants' environmental fate and transport characteristics, and (4) Create a computer-based hands-on demonstration for the Michigan Technological University Summer Youth Program. This grant is made pursuant to the joint NSF/Lucent Technologies Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships Program 1998.***