Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing: Waste Reduction through Mass Exchanger Network Synthesis

具有环保意识的制造过程的设计是一个具有挑战性的问题。面临风险的是公众健康、美国工业的竞争力，以及经济中关键的化学和制造业部门的福祉。用于控制污染的直接成本高达数千亿美元，随着公众对减少或零排放的要求越来越高，这些成本也在不断上升。这些要求使得传统的管道末端处理技术不足且昂贵。为了在世界市场上保持竞争力，美国工业必须开发新的制造工艺，以避免产生污染物，而不是依靠一旦产生污染物就捕获污染物的技术。目前解决这一问题的方法是设计分离系统，因为从反应堆流出物中回收原料和副产品可以减少原料消耗和废物处理成本。因此，一种基于多种技术的分离合成方法可以系统地设计流程，以许多分离选择的最佳组合为特征，可以有助于实现具有竞争力的、产生废物最少的过程。为了开发基于分离过程，特别是蒸馏的废物减少方法，PI一直在研究一种他称之为质量交换网络（MEN）综合和“状态-空间方法”的概念。MEN合成系统地产生了一个具有成本效益的大规模交换网络，优先将某些物种从一组丰富的溪流转移到一组贫乏的溪流。质量交换器是任何逆流直接接触传质操作（例如，吸收、解吸、吸附、液-液萃取、离子交换、汽-液平衡）。质量交换器与热交换器或其他技术（如膜分离）一起构成了分离网络的基石。“状态空间方法”提供了一个灵活的工具来综合质量/热交换网络、精馏塔序列和其他混合网络，使用诸如质量和热交换的“夹点”概念等工具。最终的结果是通过集成提高了资源利用率。

9528653 Manousioutakis UCLA The design of environmentally conscious manufacturing processes is a challenging problem. At risk are public health, the competitiveness of US industry, and the well being of the key chemical and manufacturing sectors of the economy. Direct costs dedicated to pollution control are in hundreds of billions of dollars, and as public demands for reduced or zero discharge grow, these costs escalate. These demands have made conventional, end-of-pipe treatment technoogies inadequate and expensive. To remain competitive in world markets, American industry must develop new manufacturing processes designed to avoid the generation of pollutants, rather than rely on technologies that capture pollutants once they have been generated. A current approach to this problem is in the design of separation systems, since recovery of raw materials and by-products from reactor effluents can lead to reduced raw material consumption and waste disposal costs. Thus a multi-technology based separation synthesis method that can systematically design flowsheets, featuring the optimum combination of the many separation options, could be instrumental in arriving at competitive, minimum waste generating processes. In an effort to develop waste reduction methods based on separation processes, and in particular distillation, the PI has been working on a concept that he calls mass-exchange network (MEN) synthesis and the "State-Space Approach". MEN synthesis systematically generates a cost-effective network of mass exchanges that preferentially transfers certain species from a set of rich streams to a set of lean streams. A mass exchanger is any countercurrent direct-contact mass-transfer operation (for example, absorption, desorption, adsorption, liquid-liquid extraction, ion exchange, vapor-liquid equilibrium). Mass exchangers, together with heat exchangers or other technologies (such as membrane separations), form the building blocks of separation networks. The "State-Space Appr oach" provides a flexible tool to synthesize mass/heat exchange networks, distillation column sequences and other hybrid networks using such tools as the "pinch" concept for mass and heat exchange. The end result is improved resource utilization through integration.