(443c) Sustainable Process Development for the Real World

Despite decades of innovation in sustainable process development, actual successful implementations and adoption of innovative sustainable processes are limited. This presentation addresses key challenges and misunderstandings contributing to this gap, and offers some potential strategies to improve future success. Key areas of discussion include:

• Sustainable processes vs green chemistry.
• (Second law of) thermodynamics.
• Basic economics and the premium trap.
• Capital cost estimation and scale-up.
• Experiments, data, and models.
• Complexity hides both good and bad ideas.
• Biology and
• Reaction and
• Decarbonization vs. circularity.

The development and deployment of commercially-sound sustainable processes is key for the future of the (chemical) process industries, our profession, and ultimately to continued societal development.