Decision Making and Sustainability in Chemical Process Synthesis

Abstract

In the designing and improving of manufacturing processes, engineers are dealing with complex systems and they are, more or less, using systematic approaches. The sustainability process design searches for the optimal process design, improved in economic, environmental and social terms. Decisions over process selection, design and operation necessarily involve trade-offs between cost, economic potential, operability, safety, environmental impacts etc. Professional engineers are involved in making different kinds of decisions, depending on the criteria used. This paper delineates vision of sustainable development from chemical engineering point of view, focusing on criteria used in decision-making during the chemical process synthesis and optimization. Aggregated criteria are often used in the process optimization without consensus on aggregation technique. Usually, weights of the same criteria in the literature differentiate, because different people have dissimilar visions on sustainability. Paper discusses how these conditions influence the sustainability perception and criteria composition