Evaluation and analysis of a proxy indicator for the estimation of gate-to-gate energy consumption in the early process design phases: The case of organic solvent production

A.A. Bumann, S. Papadokonstantakis, H. Sugiyama, U. Fischer and K. Hungerbühler

Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 6, 2407-2418

Abstract: Gate-to-gate process energy consumption is an important metric for sustainability as it affects both costs and environmental impact. As only little process information is available in early phases of chemical process design, a detailed energy consumption calculation is substantially restrained. Therefore, a reliable estimation of energy consumption in early phases of process design is an important alternative. In this work, an index representing process energy consumption was evaluated and tested for 14 organic solvent case studies. By using simplified process models the indices were calculated and compared to literature values for gate-to-gate energy consumption. The predictability of the process energy consumption on the basis of this indicator, including possible modifications in its original definition, was evaluated with the Pearson's and Spearman's correlation coefficients. The results further validated the use of the EI (energy index) in its original form as a proxy indicator of the process energy consumption for decision making in early stages of process design. For assessing the production of new classes of chemicals the EI should be evaluated as shown in this paper in order to establish its practicability. In certain cases an adjustment of the indicator categories may be necessary.

Keywords: Gate-to-gate energy consumption; Proxy indicator; Early-phase chemical process design; Environmental impact; Organic solvents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544210000770
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:35:y:2010:i:6:p:2407-2418

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.02.023

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().