ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC OBJECTIVE FUNCTIONS FOR SCREENING IN INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT OF FINE CHEMICAL PROCESSES - 1 - FLEXIBLE AND EXPANDABLE FRAMEWORK USING INDEXES

A general procedure for ecological and economic assessment during proc ess design is presented. General objective functions to be used in the integrated development of fine chemical processes are defined. These are intended to accompany and guide process design from the very early design stages onward. The method uses three types of indices all base d on simple mass balances. Mass balances are set up during the develop ment, continually incorporating increasing complexity and knowledge. C orrespondingly, mass-balance regions are extended from reaction to dow nstream processing and to waste treatment. Mass balances are systemati cally extended for multistep reactions. Mass-loss indices (MLI) are co mbined with ecological and economic weighing factors to yield environm ental indices (EI) and economic indices (CI). Environmental indices ar e based on ABC-classification schemes related to environmental laws an d regulations. Economic indices rely on raw material and waste treatme nt costs and may also include equipment and operating costs. These scr eening indices support condensed and lucid presentation and interpreta tion of mass-balance data and can be used as objective functions for t he integrated development of chemical processes especially during the early design stage. Process examples are given in part 2 of this paper .