Total Environmental Impact Index Of Chemicals

The chemical industry plays a key role to the economic health of a society and the improvement of people's life standard However the usage of chemical substances in a tremendous quantity are involved during the chemical processes, and the emission of these chemicals causes various environmental impacts, including global warming (the green-house effect), ozone depletion, acid rain and the like.A total environmental impact of chemicals is one of the most significant issues during environmental policy-making, process design and production. The determination of relative weights for various environmental impacts is a key step in measuring the "total" impact. The main focus of thesis is on the assessment of a total environmental impact of a chemical, which is based on the monetization of the damage due to a series of environemtal impacts.The main contributions have been made by this thesis as follows:(1) The main environment impacts are analysed; and a series of correlations between marginal damage costs and indices for measuring the corresponding environmental impacts, for example, GWP (global warming potential) or ODP (ozone depletion potential), of chemicals are established based on the economic valuations of damage and the environmental distribution of the chemicals.(2) A total environmental impact index (TEIP) for chemicals is obtained, which is a simple function of a set of existed environmental indices such as GWP and ODP.(3) Applications of the TEIP as a criterion for environmental policy-making, reaction routine selection and as an important factor in process design are discussed.(4) Green design of a process for extracting caprolactam from ammonium sulphate solution using a pulsed packed column in a chemical Corporation are achieved by using of the TEIP indicator. An analysis of and a comparison between the different parameters resulted respectively from traditional and green designs are carried out.