Design and optimization of an inherently safe and sustainable process for the separation of anisole

Sustainable process design problems are multi-faceted approaches that pose challenges in terms of the evaluation of indicators to optimize inherent safety, economics, and control. In recent years, chemical engineering has taken advantage of recent advances in process systems engineering more notably considering intensification to generate green and more sustainable processes. This work presents the design and optimization of the anisole separation process under three intensified and one conventional schemes using a systematized methodology to find optimal designs of purification processes where the interactions between the different sustainability indicators are balanced to obtain optimal configurations. The indeces chosen in the course of process optimization (inherent safety, economic, and control) aim at generating green and more sustainable process alternatives. The results indicate that the most intensified processes, as is the case of the Dividing Wall Column (DWC), is the one with the best sustainability indicators, with better inherent safety and better operability despite it being an intensified process with fewer operational degrees of freedom. In addition, the environmental impact after the optimization of each of the processes were evaluated. Separation through DWC resulted in 2.43% savings in economic terms, 0.31% in inherent safety, improved controllability performance, and a 3.35% reduction in environmental impact, in comparison with the conventional sequence used as baseline. This indicates that in the case of anisole separation, process intensification can yield a more sustainable process design.