Process Safety and Environmental Protection for Extractive Distillation: A Guide to the Application of Inherent Risk and Eco-Indicator 99

Continuous release of polluting emissions to environment and consumption of raw materials at high rate are inevitable consequences of increasing demand for goods and services due to perpetual population rise, which may compromise the natural resources for the future generations. This concern has triggered the need to develop more sustainable processes (Schöggl et al., 2020). Such processes require modifications in the category and magnitude of the raw materials and utilities used, in the prevention and minimization of all types of polluting emissions, and in the manufacture of the required products without negatively affecting the economic, environmental, and social benefits. These sustainable considerations should be included in the planning at all stages of the industrial supply chain (e.g., product source, manufacturing plant, distribution, and disposal). Integrating sustainability in the design of processes contributes to the prevention and minimization of negative aspects in the topic of sustainability, instead of making corrective and costly modifications (Jiménez-González et al., 2012). However, one of the difficulties in quantifying the sustainability of the process lies in establishing the correct procedure to achieve better sustainability performance. Therefore, developing indicators capable of evaluating the sustainability of chemical processes becomes crucial for decision-making and progressing towards sustainable development. These indicators must have the ability to integrate complex process operations and transport phenomena into a manageable amount of quantitative information that is easy to analyze and evaluate. The sustainability approach is highly recognized as a useful tool at any scale of the processes, i.e., unit operation, process design, company, supply chain, and etc.