SYNTHESIS OF REACTION PATHS WITH MINIMUM INVOLVEMENT OF HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES

J.B. Varga¹, F. Friedler¹,²,³, Y. Zhang³ and L.T. Fan³

¹Department of Computer Science, University of Veszprem, H-8200 Veszprem, Hungary; ²Department of Systems Engineering, Research Institute of Chemical Engineering, Hungary Academy of Sciences, Veszprem, Pf. 125, H8201, Hungary, 36-88-424-483; and 3Department of Chemical Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 66506, 913-532-5584


ABSTRACT

The available methods for reaction path or network synthesis are incapable of directly taking into account the generation of hazardous substances. A novel method is introduced here to alleviate this deficiency; it prevents the occurrence of unwanted chemical species, e.g., hazardous substances, in a reaction network from the outset of its synthesis. This method, based on the combinatorial technique originally developed for process synthesis, can generate reaction paths satisfying either of the following requirements: (1) no by-products are hazardous, and (2) no hazardous substances are involved. For either case, the maximum reaction network is constructed first, which, in turn, gives rise to a set of all feasible reaction networks or paths. The efficacy of the method has been demonstrated with a realistic example.

KEY WORDS

reaction network, hazardous substances, synthesis

This paper is from the Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference on Hazardous Waste Research 1995, published in hard copy and on the Web by the Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Hazardous Substance Research Center.