Environmental Assessment of a Large-Scale Production of TiO2 Nanoparticles via Green Chemistry

Abstract

Green chemistry concept is currently implemented in order to stimulate the development of sustainability processes and pollution prevention. However, not for all cases the use of this type of process generates an operation with good environmental performance, also in the development and evaluation of new topologies, such as the one presented in this paper, environmental assessment becomes in an important tool in order to optimize the process. In this work for developed a synthesis of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles from titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) via green chemistry. Environmental assessment was performed using software WAR GUI, which use Waste Reduction Algorithm in order to quantify potential environmental impacts generation and output environmental impacts for this process for 4 different cases. Results show that the process doesn’t generate high potential environmental impacts (PEI) with a rate of 1.43X102 PEI/h for the case that include energy and product contributions, which represents a very low value compared to the total output rate for this case (1.21X104 PEI/h). For toxicological categories, it was obtained that for human toxicity by ingestion (HTPI) and terrestrial toxicity potential (TTP) categories exist some environmental impacts due to presence of TTIP in a high concentration, additionally these effects are increased by propanol, as a subproduct of the hydrolysis, and ethanol as solvent for the purification stage. For the aquatic matrix the potential impacts obtained was relatively low. On the other hand, it was determined for atmospheric effects that the presence of the alcohols in the process rises the potential impact related to the photochemical oxidation potential category.