I-Corps: Energy Efficient Process Design Alternatives

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力集中在用于减少化学制造中能源使用的新设计工艺软件上。日用化学品、塑料、聚合物和其他材料需要大量的能源来制造，制造这些产品的公司构成了美国和全球工业部门最大的能源消费者群体。在化学、生物化学和制药工业中存在许多降低能耗的机会，特别是在化学分离领域。这项创新有可能为客户提供改造现有设施和/或新的基层设计的新能力，以减少能源消耗，降低运营成本，提高公司利润，同时减少二氧化碳排放。这个I-Corps项目的核心是基于工程，几何和优化原则相结合的新型工艺设计技术。设计软件及其所基于的技术可用于可靠地确定符合特定工艺能源目标的可行节能设计组合，并可轻松与解决热交换和化学反应的其他方法相结合。它允许用户自动和系统地探索广泛的工艺替代方案，包括反应，分离和再循环的工艺，涉及混合分离和/或工艺强化的工艺。与目前用于相同任务的其他方法不同，这项新技术保证了最终设计的可行性。该核心技术已在公开文献中的广泛基准设计示例中进行了广泛的测试。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project centers on new design process software for reducing energy use in chemical manufacturing. Commodity chemicals, plastics, polymers and other materials require large amounts of energy to make and the companies that manufacture these products make up the single largest group of energy consumers in the industrial sector in the U.S. and worldwide. Many opportunities for reducing energy consumption exist within the chemical, biochemical, and pharmaceutical industries, particularly in the area of chemical separations. The innovation has potential to provide customers with new capabilities for retrofitting existing facilities and/or new grass roots designs to reduce energy consumption, reduce operating costs, improve company profits, and simultaneously reduce carbon dioxide emissions.This I-Corps project has at its core novel process design technology that is based on a combination of engineering, geometric, and optimization principles. The design software, and the technology on which it is based, can be used to reliably determine portfolios of feasible, energy efficient designs that meet specific process energy targets and can easily be combined with other methods that address heat exchange and chemical reaction. It allows the user to automatically and systematically explore a wide range of process alternatives, including processes with reaction, separation and recycle, those that involve hybrid separations, and/or process intensification. Unlike other currently available methods for the same task, this new technology guarantees that the resulting designs are feasible. The core technology has been extensively tested on a wide range of benchmark design examples in the open literature.