(650c) Hierarchical Estimation of Sustainability-Potential: Application to the Manufacture of Vinyl Chloride

A hierarchical approach is presented to estimate the sustainability-potential of the alternative synthetic routes for a chemical to be manufactured. The notion of sustainability-potential is a generalization of the notion of profit-potential, the estimation of which renders it possible to screen out economically non-viable processes derived from the alternative synthetic routes at the earliest stage. At the outset of assessment, all the individual alternative synthetic routes are identified by the graph-theoretic method based on P-graphs. Subsequently, the individual alternative synthetic routes are sequentially assessed in descending order of quantifiability in terms of available energy, or exergy, dissipation, the possible profit, and the toxicity index, espectively. The efficacy of the approach is demonstrated with the manufacture of vinyl chloride (C2H3Cl).