Sustainable Plantwide Optimizing Control for an Acrylic Acid Process

Area of Science:

• Chemical Engineering
• Process Control
• Sustainable Manufacturing

Background:

• Traditional plantwide control (PWC) strategies often overlook environmental and economic sustainability.
• Integrating green chemistry principles into process control can lead to more efficient and responsible chemical manufacturing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a sustainable plantwide optimizing control (PWOC) strategy for acrylic acid production.
• To assess the economic and environmental performance of the sustainable PWOC compared to conventional and non-sustainable PWOC approaches.

Main Methods:

• Incorporation of green chemistry principles as constraints within the plantwide optimizing control (PWOC) formulation.
• Comparative analysis of the sustainable PWOC strategy against a non-sustainable PWOC and a conventional PWC structure in an operational acrylic acid plant environment.

Main Results:

• The sustainable PWOC achieved the highest cumulative profitability ($1.6274 × 10^5 USD), outperforming the non-sustainable PWOC (1.4330 × 10^5 USD) and decentralized PWC (1.4158 × 10^5 USD).
• The sustainable PWOC demonstrated significant reductions in process emissions: 6.17% lower than non-sustainable PWOC and 9.79% lower than decentralized PWC.
• The strategy effectively mitigated impacts on global warming and human health through explicit green chemistry metric integration.

Conclusions:

• Integrating green chemistry principles into PWOC formulation is a viable and effective strategy for enhancing both economic performance and environmental sustainability in chemical plants.
• The proposed sustainable PWOC approach offers a significant improvement over traditional control strategies, leading to reduced emissions and increased profitability.