Product And Process Design Principles

[Gigí Ruais]

WarrenD. Seider is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a B.S. degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. Seider has contributed to the fields of process analysis, simulation, design, and control. He has authored or coauthored over 110 journal articles and authored or edited seven books. He helped to organize the CACHE (Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering Education) Committee in 1969 and served as its chairman. Seider is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Computers and Chemical Engineering.

Daniel R. Lewin is Professor of Chemical Engineering, the Churchill Family Chair, and the Director of the Process Systems Engineering (PSE) research group at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Edinburgh and his D.Sc. from the Technion. He has authored or co-authored over 100 technical publications in the area of process systems engineering, as well as the first three editions of this textbook, and the multimedia CD that accompanies it.

J. D. Seader is Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. In 2004, he received, with Professor Warren D. Seider, the Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education from the AIChE. In 2008, his textbook, "Separation Process Principles" with co-author Ernest J. Henley, was cited as one of 30 ground-breaking books in the last 100 years of chemical engineering.

Soemantri Widagdo is a retired R&D executive after a 15-year career at 3M. His last position was the R&D Head of 3M Southeast Asia. He received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia, and his M.Ch.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology. He has been involved in a variety of technology and product-development programs involving renewable energy, industrial and transportation applications, consumer office products, electrical and electronics applications, health care and dentistry, and display and graphics applications. He has authored and co-authored over 20 technical publications and two patents.

Rafiqul Gani is Professor of System Design at the Department of Chemical & Biochemical Engineering, The Technical University of Denmark and the head and co-founder of the Computer Aided Product-Process Engineering Center (CAPEC). He received a B.S degree from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, and M.S., DIC and Ph.D. degrees from Imperial College, London. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and delivered over 300 lectures, seminars and plenary/keynote lectures at international conferences, institutions and companies all over the world. Professor Gani is currently (2014-2016) the president of the EFCE (European Federation of Chemical Engineering); a member of the Board of Trustees of the AIChE; a Fellow of the AIChE and also a Fellow of IChemE.

Ka Ming Ng is Chair Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained his B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. from the University of Houston. His research interests center on product conceptualization, process design and business development involving water, natural herbs, nanomaterials, and advanced materials. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers where he received the Excellence in Process Development Research Award in 2002.

Updated and expanded resources available on the book companion site: program and simulation files that solve 60 example problems; a solution manual for homework exercises; 93 design problem statements, and multimedia courseware that uses voice, video, and animation to introduce new users of the steady-state simulators to the specifics of two of the most widely used process simulation programs, ASPEN PLUS and HYSYS (UniSim Design)

The percent atom economy is simply the formula weight of the desired product(s) (compound 4, 137 g/mol) divided by the sum of the formula weights of all the reactants (275 g/mol), which gives 50% in this case. Simply put, even if our percent yield is 100%, only half the mass of the reactants atoms are incorporated in the desired product while the other half is wasted in unwanted by-products. Imagine telling your mom you baked a cake and threw away half the ingredients! Thus chemists must not only strive to achieve maximum percent yield, but also design syntheses that maximize the incorporation of the atoms of the reactants into the desired product.

Minimizing toxicity, while simultaneously maintaining function and efficacy, may be one of the most challenging aspects of designing safer products and processes. Achieving this goal requires an understanding of not only chemistry but also of the principles of toxicology and environmental science. Highly reactive chemicals are often used by chemists to manufacture products because they are quite valuable at affecting molecular transformations. However, they are also more likely to react with unintended biological targets, human and ecological, resulting in unwanted adverse effects. Without understanding the fundamental structure hazard relationship, even the most skilled molecular magician enters the challenge lacking a complete toolkit.

Mastering the art and science of toxicology requires innovative approaches to chemical characterization that state that hazard is a design flaw and must be addressed at the genesis of molecular design. The intrinsic hazard of elements and molecules is a fundamental chemical property that must be characterized, evaluated and managed as part of a systems-based strategy for chemical design.

Now is the ideal time to develop a comprehensive and cooperative effort between toxicologists and chemists, focused on training the next generation of scientists to design safer chemicals in a truly holistic and trans-disciplinary manner through innovative curricular advancements. The field of toxicology is evolving rapidly, incorporating and applying the advancements made in molecular biology to reveal the mechanisms of toxicity. Elucidation of these pathways serve as the starting point for articulating design rules that are required by chemists to guide their choices in a quest to make safer chemicals. We are at the dawn of a new sunrise, poised to illuminate the path forward to a safer, healthier and more sustainable world.

Although these references are given to provide additional information that may be useful or interesting, EPA is not responsible for, and cannot attest to the accuracy of, the content of these articles.

It was a green chemistry conference and the very famous synthetic chemist had just received a question about why he had chosen a solvent that was without question a very poor choice. You have to be realistic, chemists know intuitively what's best, and solvents don't matter. It's the chemistry that counts. I've heard this kind of remark repeatedly over many years, despite the fact that it goes against the spirit and letter of Principle 5.

Solvents and mass separation agents of all kinds matter a lot to the chemistry not to mention the chemical process and the overall "greenness" of the reaction. In many cases, reactions wouldn't proceed without solvents and/or mass separation agents. To say that they don't matter, or that it's only the chemistry that counts is not just a logical fallacy, it's chemically incorrect. Solvents and separation agents provide for mass and energy transfer and without this, many reactions will not proceed.

Solvents and mass separation agents also drive most of the energy consumption in a process. Think about it for a moment. Solvents are alternately heated, distilled, cooled, pumped, mixed, distilled under vacuum, filtered, etc. And that's before they may or may not be recycled. If they're not recycled, they are often incinerated.

Solvents are also the major contributors to the overall toxicity profile and because of that, compose the majority of the materials of concern associated with a process. On average, they contribute the greatest concern for process safety issues because they are flammable and volatile, or under the right conditions, explosive. They also generally drive workers to don personal protective equipment of one kind or another.

We will always need solvents, and with many things in chemical processes, it's a matter of impact trading. Optimize a solvent according to one green metric and many times, there are three others that don't look so good. The object is to choose solvents that make sense chemically, reduce the energy requirements, have the least toxicity, have the fewest life cycle environmental impacts and don't have major safety impacts.

Solvents and separation agents do matter and despite one or more famous synthetic organic chemists may think. It is possible to make better choices, and that is what application of this principle should promote.

For those that do think about energy, most if not all the attention that energy gets from chemists is devoted to heating, cooling, separations, electrochemistry, pumping and reluctantly, to calculations related to thermodynamics (e.g., Gibbs Free Energy). The attention is not in minimizing or considering where energy comes from or if it matters what form is used, it's just a given that we need to heat or cool or shove electrons into the reaction to make or break bonds. In reflecting on my own training as a chemist, I never was asked to convert any heating, cooling, pumping or electrochemical requirements to a cost for electricity, steam or some other utility. That may be done in chemical engineering, but not in chemistry.

Energy is a key issue for the 21st century. A majority of the energy that is produced is based, and will continue to be based on fossil fuels. And most of the energy that is delivered to the point of use is lost in conversion and transmission. What this means is that if you look at the life cycle of energy production, and you look at how much energy is actually available for useful work at the point of need, it is less than 1 or 2 percent of the energy that was originally available in the fossil fuel. It is also true that most fossil fuel energy is used for transportation services of one kind or another and the second biggest use is in space heating and cooling. There are a tremendous number of opportunities for chemists to change this energy use profile, but it is my experience that very few chemists see themselves as being a part of either transportation or the built environment.

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