A systematic methodology for comparing the sustainability of process systems based on weighted performance indicators

Abstract

Governmental and commercial institutions have been developing new frameworks aimed to provide useful information on potential environmental, social and economic effects of their operations and, hence, assist in decision-making tasks. Nevertheless, most methodologies either rely on quality data that may not be promptly available or fail to quantify the sustainability of processes. In light of this, in this paper we propose a computer-aided systematic method for quantitatively assessing and comparing the overall sustainability of process systems on the basis of weighted performance metrics. The proposed framework consists in defining the required steps for gathering information, assigning weights, calculating and aggregating indicators in a volumetric composite evaluation index. The functionality of our methodology is demonstrated through its application to different tetrahydrofuran-ethanol separation technologies, which are compared in terms of 24 sustainability metrics. Finally, an uncertainty and sensitivity analysis was performed in order to test the robustness of the proposed framework.