Environmental impact and occupational hazard evaluation on intensified processes to produce diphenyl carbonate

Abstract

When working on design of intensified processes or develop of a new technology it is very important to have the necessary tools and criteria to select the best option. In this work the environmental impact and occupational health of twelve intensified reactive distillations processes to produce diphenyl carbonate are evaluated and studied, diphenyl carbonate is an important precursor of polycarbonate by a green route. These designs were selected due to their different attributes as low cost and bad controllability, high cost and good controllability and the intermediate case that has in balance the cost and controllability. These intensified processes are grouped in four different schemes: Conventional Reactive Distillation (CRD); Thermally Coupled Reactive Distillation (TCRD); Reactive Distillation with heat Integration (RDHI) and Reactive Distillation with Thermally Coupled and Heat Integration (THRD). The results show that all intensified processes presented important reductions of around 30% in environmental impact and 60% less occupational health risk. However, TCRD processes are the options that have the best balance between cost, controllability, environmental impact and occupational health.