Process intensification: A perspective on process synthesis

In recent years, process intensification (PI) has attracted considerable academic interest as a potential means for process improvement, to meet the increasing demands for sustainable production. A variety of intensified operations developed in academia and industry creates a large number of options to potentially improve the process but to identify the set of feasible solutions for PI in which the optimal can be found takes considerable resources. Hence, a process synthesis tool to achieve PI would potentially assist in the generation and evaluation of PI options. Currently, several process design tools with a clear focus on specific PI tasks exist. Therefore, in this paper, the concept of a general systematic framework for synthesis and design of PI options in hierarchical steps through analyzing an existing process, generating PI options in a superstructure and evaluating intensified process options is presented. For each step, different tools and methods will be needed. In this paper, a knowledge base tool storing and retrieving necessary information/data about intensified processes/equipments has been highlighted including metrics for performance evaluation. The application of the main concepts is illustrated through an example involving the operation of a membrane reactor.