Abstract
Considering that functional magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles with exceptional physicochemical properties can be highly applicable in different fields, scaling-up strategies are becoming important for their large-scale production. This study reports simulations of scaled-up production of citric acid-coated magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4-cit), aiming to evaluate the potential environmental impacts (PEIs) and the exergetic efficiency. The simulations were performed using the waste reduction algorithm and the Aspen Plus software. PEI and energy/exergy performance are calculated and quantified. The inlet and outlet streams are estimated by expanding the mass and energy flow, setting operating parameters of processing units, and defining a thermodynamic model for properties estimation. The high environmental performance of the production process is attributed to the low outlet rate of PEI compared to the inlet rate. The product streams generate low PEI contribution (−3.2 × 103 PEI/y) because of the generation of environmentally friendlier substances. The highest results in human toxicity potential (3.2 × 103 PEI/y), terrestrial toxicity potential (3.2 × 103 PEI/y), and photochemical oxidation potential (2.6 × 104 PEI/y) are attributed to the ethanol within the waste streams. The energy source contribution is considerably low with 27 PEI/y in the acidification potential ascribed to the elevated levels of hydrogen ions into the atmosphere. The global exergy of 1.38% is attributed to the high irreversibilities (1.7 × 105 MJ/h) in the separation stage, especially, to the centrifuge CF-2 (5.07%). The sensitivity analysis establishes that the global exergy efficiency increases when the performance of the centrifuge CF-2 is improved, suggesting to address enhancements toward low disposal of ethanol in the wastewater.
Highlights
Globalization has increased the emerging technologies and processes to cover the consumption demands of societies, market competitions, and future innovations.[1]
The exergy analysis is defined using the second law of thermodynamics, which describes the maximum amount of work produced during the process that brings the system into equilibrium with the environment
The contributions in scenarios 2 and 4 with values up to 3.3 × 104 potential environmental impacts (PEIs)/y and 3.3 × 101 PEI/t of the product indicates that product streams promoted major environmental impacts compared to the energy streams
Summary
Globalization has increased the emerging technologies and processes to cover the consumption demands of societies, market competitions, and future innovations.[1] The major challenges for the industries are related to resource depletion, ozone depletion, ecosystem damage, and human health.[2] These are critical factors for the green engineering design of new technologies and processes considering the economic, environmental, and social development.[3] the process design needs to incorporate the sustainability concept toward the creation of new production routes and the optimization of the existing process technologies.[4] The sustainability concept integrates material and energy efficiency, water conservation, greenhouse emissions, and zero-discharge wastes.[5] Several techniques have been extensively applied to evaluate the environmental sustainability of new technologies and processes, allowing to quantify sustainability indicators and to determine the environmental impacts and performance.[6] Environmental sustainability is highlighted because of its wide participation in manufacturing, nanotechnological, water treatment, and energetic processes, representing a challenge in the development of green engineering designs.[7]
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