chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028

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Chemical Engineering Research and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cherd

Chemical engineering in a sustainable economy

Michael Narodoslawsky ∗
Institute for Process and Particle Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 13/3, 8010 Graz, Austria

a b s t r a c t

Sustainability constitutes a new development paradigm that builds on the recognition of limitations of resources,
the necessity for inter and transgenerational equity within human society and the need for preservation of life
supporting natural systems. Growing from its roots in the late 20th century it has evolved into a serious guiding
principle for human development for the 21st century.
This development paradigm has strong implications for the professional practice of chemical engineers, in partic-
ular the way they design industrial processes. One aspect of sustainable development will be a much stronger focus
on renewable resources for energy provision as well as bio-resources for fuel, storable energy and chemicals. This
will change the structure of industrial processes, requiring adaptation to spatial context as well as a broader process
concept including logistic considerations into the process development. Responsibility for the whole life cycle of
industrial production, process intensification and thinking in technology networks rather than optimising isolated
steps within life cycles and technology networks will define the framework in which chemical engineers will have
to carry out their design.
The strong interdisciplinary base of chemical engineering as well as the significance of many methods like mass
and energy balances and the systemic development of processes for the general transformation of society towards
sustainability put chemical engineers in a central role in sustainable development. Sharpening their capabilities and
developing their instruments and skills further to meet the challenges posed by sustainable development will be
necessary in order to realise the considerable potential for the profession of chemical engineers in future.
© 2013 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sustainable development; Renewable resources; Bio-resources

1. Introduction combatting grave diseases that would have been unthinkable

Ever since chemical engineering met the challenge of system-
atising chemical technologies at the beginning of the 20th
century this engineering discipline soared in economic suc-
cess as well as in importance to society. With the concept
of unit operations first formulated by Arthur D. Little in 1915
(Bowden, 1997) and with its strongly systemic approach to pro-
cesses (Walker et al., 1923), chemical engineering commanded
the methodological instruments to translate the advances
in chemistry into products and services that would revolu-
tionise society in the last century. Regardless if we talk about
the explosion of mobility that would have been unthinkable
without cheap fuel, the Green Revolution vastly increasing agri-
cultural yields that would have been unthinkable without
readily available fertilizers and pesticides or the successes in
without highly complex but still mass-produced drugs, chem-
ical engineering has been the base of progress in the 20th
century.
The development after the adoption of the unifying princi-
ple of unit operations was characterised by permeation of an
ever increasing number of industrial sectors by chemical engi-
neering. Starting from the classical field of chemical industry
(including fields like pulp & paper industry) chemical engi-
neering became an important part of petroleum industry, the
energy sector, food industry and, more recently, the pharma-
ceutical industry.
In the second half of the 20th century, coinciding with the
unprecedented success of chemical engineering as key indus-
trial process technology, society especially in highly developed
industrial nations became acutely aware of the implications

∗
Tel.: +43 6645231945.
E-mail address: narodoslawsky@tugraz.at
Received 21 March 2013; Received in revised form 13 June 2013; Accepted 19 June 2013
0263-8762/$ – see front matter © 2013 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2013.06.022
2022 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028
of unfettered economic development on nature. Following the
seminal book Silent Spring (Carson, 1962) various nature preser-
vation movements took hold in many nations either in the
form of NGOs or even as political parties like the various Green
Parties in Europe. As a direct result this opened new fields to
chemical engineering as the abatement of harmful emissions
to the environment required innovative processes that more
often than not were based on chemical engineering concepts.
This development however initiated a change in the frame-
work in which chemical engineering operated: the impact of
industrial processes on the environment became a major con-
cern for all sectors that relied on chemical engineering.
During the 1970s and 1980s the restructuring of society’s
relation with the environment gathered momentum. Prob-
lems like acid rain and ozone depletion came into focus of
public awareness, leading to massive investments in emission
control technologies and even international treaties to phase
out or curb emissions of harmful substances, such as the Mon-
treal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987
based on the findings of Molina and Rowland (1974), about
stratospheric ozone depletion by chlorofluoromethanes. By
the turn of the century the global challenge of climate change
took centre stage in public debate about humanities impact on
our planet, leading on the one hand to international efforts to
curb CO2 emissions in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and in indus-
try to a particular drive to improve energy efficiency and turn
towards renewable energy sources.
At the same time another global political debate gathered
force and finally merged with the discourse about preser-
vation of nature: the sustainability discourse. Initiated by the
United Nations General Assembly as a follow-up on the 1972
Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and the 1980
World Conservation Strategy of the International Union for the Con-
servation of Nature, Gro Harlem Brundtland was tasked with
heading the World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED). The work of this commission linked nature conserva-
tion with global economic development as well as intra and
inter-generational equity in a new development paradigm.
Their final report (WCED, 1987) became the fundament of the
global debate about the sustainable development, paving the
way to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The doc-
uments signed at this event still define the framework of
sustainable development and hence for the further develop-
ment of chemical engineering in the 21st century.
2. The challenge of sustainable
development: living within limited infinity
The WCED report clearly frames the challenge of sustaina-
bility: it requires human society to live within the limitations
of our planet in a way that allows infinite development in tem-
poral terms. For chemical engineering as the key engineering
science for utilising material resources this translates into a
new framework for designing industrial processes. In its most
stringent form this framework is defined by the following sus-
tainability principles (SUSTAIN, 1994):
1. Human activities must not alter long term storage com-
partments of global material cycles in quality as well as
in quantity. If this principle is not adhered to resources
will be depleted and substances accumulated in ecosphere,
overstraining the natural cycles.
2. Flows to ecosphere have to be kept within the qualitative
and quantitative range of natural variations in environ-
mental compartments. If such flows exceed the amount a
compartment can integrate the accumulating substances
will alter the compartment. This alteration can lead to a
local environment that is no longer able to sustain flora
and fauna.
Following these two principles means in more practical
terms that emissions from society have to be scaled to natural
flows. This will be particularly poignant for the use of fossil
resources. Here we clearly overshoot the capacity of nature
to take back our CO2 emissions in long term storage, leading
to accumulation in the atmosphere with the known conse-
quence of global climate change. A large body of literature
points to this fact (e.g. Reay et al., 2008) stating that the current
level of fossil resource utilisation of about 6.4 Gt/a of carbon is
by a factor of more than 30 higher than the rate of long term
storage of carbon via sedimentation to the ocean bed. These
numbers alone already require a profound re-thinking of the
resource base of society with strong implications for chemical
engineering.
Change the resource base of society away from fossil
resources is however not only caused by the limitation in car-
rying capacity of our planet. It becomes increasingly evident
that fossil resources are limited and that, in the case of crude
oil and natural gas, they may reach their production maxima
within the 21st century (Favennec, 2011). This adds to the pres-
sure on society to look for other sources to cover its energy and
material demand.
In the energy sector these facts have already given rise to
intensive efforts to change the underlying technology base
towards renewable resources based systems. Political strate-
gies such as the European Union Strategic Energy Technologies
Plan (EC, 2007) aim at a turnaround in the energy system by
2050, with a major share of the energy supply being covered
by direct solar energy (thermal as well as photovoltaic), wind
and hydro power. All these energy sources however are only
intermittently available, calling for either material energy car-
riers or energy storage materials to align energy demand and
supply.
Here we encounter particular challenges for chemical engi-
neering: providing energy storage in a sustainable way. This
calls on the one hand for the production of high tech materials
for batteries (as well as materials for other energy technolo-
gies like photovoltaic and concentrated solar heat) without
harmful emissions. On the other hand this requires the devel-
opment and optimisation of processes that utilise biogenic
material as a way to provide storable and transportable energy
carriers and fuels in a sustainable way. The following argu-
ments will concentrate on the latter challenge as the changes
in the design framework of chemical engineering caused by
meeting this challenge will be particularly dramatic.
If bio-resources will form the future base for material
and energy carriers chemical engineering faces new realities
in terms of availability and markets. In terms of utilisation
efficiency of solar energy bio-resources trail other conver-
sion pathways by far: maximum theoretical conversion rates
are between 4.6 (for C-plants) and 6% (for C-4 plants) of
incoming solar radiation (Zhu et al., 2008), with practical con-
version rates around 50% of this theoretical values. This puts
bio-resources at a disadvantage to other solar based energy
technologies in terms of competition for the limited resource
area (see Fig. 1).
 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028
Fig. 1 – Solar energy conversion efficiency ranges of various technologies (note that the efficiencies for photovoltaic and
concentrated solar power are given as solar-to-electricity).
The low efficiency of solar energy conversion via bio-
resources as well as competition from other sectors will
re-shape the both resource and product markets in which
chemical engineers operate. Bio-resources will never be able
to just replace fossil materials as a general source for materials
and energy. They are already extensively utilised. On the one
hand they provide the food base for a still increasing human
society, tying up much of fertile farm land today. On the other
hand established sectors like pulp & paper industry and con-
struction take in a large share of forest resources. This means
that bio-resources will have to be reserved for special energy
applications that may not be covered by other sources as well
as for the provision of materials. This will concentrate the
conversion of bio-resources to the provision of bio-fuels (in
competition with electricity as a source for mobility), applica-
tions to guarantee the stability of energy distribution grids (in
particular the electricity and heat system) and bio-materials.
In all these markets bio-resource based technologies will face
stiff competition from fossil based technologies at least within
the 21st century.
Increased utilisation of bio-resources for energy provision
as well as production of chemicals will inevitably put the focus
on the limitation of another key resource, namely water. Agri-
culture is by far the largest user of water, followed by industry
(Postel et al., 1996). Utilising bio-resources links these two
major water consuming sectors even more closely. This will
add to the challenges for process engineering by optimising
water use along the whole value chain, from resource provi-
sion to industrial production.
3. Design framework derived from
sustainability
The following arguments will be based on (Gwehenberger and
Narodoslawsky, 2008) however extending and systematising
the line of thought presented there. The framework will define
additional aspects that have to be taken into account in the
chemical engineering design practice that may be deduced
from the concept of sustainable development. It has to be
stated at this point that chemical engineering with its strong
systemic orientation and its function to link natural science,
engineering and industrial practice is in a privileged starting
2023
position among many other engineering sectors to meet the
challenges of sustainable development. It is however a key
engineering discipline for adapting human society towards
sustainability, too.
3.1. Life cycle design scope
One particular aspect of sustainability is the recognition of
inherent systemic linkage of human activities. For industry
this boils down to the fact that any industrial process is always
part of a larger system that converts resources into raw mate-
rials, into products and into services for society and finally
reintegrate all emissions and wastes generated along this life
cycle into the ecosphere. Rather than producing products from
raw materials the function of industry is to provide services
from resources. This means that all actors along the life cycle
share responsibility for the whole service and that no actor
can design (or optimise) his part of the whole system inde-
pendently from the overall performance of the life cycle.
Thinking in life cycles has important implications on
design practice as well as on information flow between the
actors of a life cycle: designing a conventional industrial pro-
cess requires providing a functional product with least costs
and environmental damage. Designing a life cycle means co-
operation with all partner up-stream and down-stream the
production process, taking product use and disposal into con-
sideration while providing a particular service at least costs
and minimal ecological impact. This can only be achieved
when the information flow along the life cycle is sufficient,
providing partner down-stream with knowledge about eco-
logical and social impacts accrued so far and all partner
up-stream with information about strategies to maximise
service quality and minimise social and ecological pressures.
For chemical engineers this design challenge calls for an
extension to the already established systemic concept of
process, now comprising the whole life cycle, with the sub-
processes in the life cycle becoming a form of new unit
operations. Many basic concepts such as mass- and energy
balances are assets that chemical engineers bring to the task of
life cycle wide design. What is however new is the integration
of aspects other than pure costs, environmental compliance
and safety issues in the design strategy. Ecological sustaina-
bility of raw material provision, sustainable re-integration of
2024 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028
Table 1 – Resources gaining importance for industry
under sustainable development conditions.
Raw material category Material
Underutilised Gras
agricultural products Algae
Sugar beets
Residues from Low quality forest residues
agriculture/forestry Straw from corn, cereals, oil seeds, . . .
Leafs from beets, potatoes, . . .
Cuttings from wine yards, orchards, . . .
Manure
Residues from Tallow
industries Slaughterhouse residues
Oil seed cake
Dried distillers grain
Pomace
Tanning residues
Residues from Waste paper
society Waste plastic
Organic municipal waste
Garden cuttings
Used vegetable oil
Residues from CO2
energy provision Ashes
Waste heat
life cycle wide emissions and wastes into the ecosphere, social
and economic equity within the life cycle and questions of
global justice are no longer boundary conditions but integral
aspects of design, requiring chemical engineers to widen their
interdisciplinary capabilities considerably.
3.2. Conscious utilisation of resources
As fossil resources become limited in their production capac-
ities and bio-resources are increasingly contested by other
sectors, it will be a sign of chemical engineering ingenuity
to avoid resource competition by harnessing technological
flexibility and conscious utilisation of resources. It is a fact
that many sectors competing for resources and in particu-
lar bio-resources have very stringent requirements for their
raw materials. Food industry relies on high quality crops; con-
struction business requires wooden beams and boards that
may only be provided by grown trees, leaving considerable
forest by-products for other uses. A necessary design strat-
egy for chemical engineering within sustainable development
is to concentrate on underutilised raw materials, materials
that are by-products from the provision of other products
or even downright waste flows as their prime raw materi-
als. This strategy serves two purposes: on the one hand it
reduces resource competition, thus relieving the pressure on
ecosystems for raw material generation as well as reducing
raw material costs. On the other hand it reduces the overall
environmental pressure of society as the same effort to gen-
erate primary resources actually results in more services for
society if by-products and wastes are utilised.
Table 1 (adapted from Gwehenberger and Narodoslawsky,
2008) provides examples for resources that may become
important for chemical engineering from the point of view of
sustainable development. The table shows that the resource
base for industry will be become more varied and of minor
quality, requiring chemical engineers to develop efficient pro-
cesses to utilise them with low economic and environmental
impact.
The argument just brought forward does however not
restrain industry from using other raw materials. Chemical
engineering will still deal with processes based on mineral,
fossil as well as high quality bio-resources in addition to
those described above. The challenge here is to find the right
resource for the provision of a certain service, taking the whole
life cycle into account. Upgrading low quality input at any cost
(following the Alchemist dream of turning straw into gold) is
as unsustainable as using a contested high quality raw mate-
rial such as corn to produce a low end product such as bio-fuel
(Wenzel, 2009; Stoeglehner and Narodoslawky, 2013).
3.3. Utilise the synthesis power of nature
Following the line of thought of the life cycle as scope for
design as well as the argument above of selecting the right
resource as a base for providing a certain service, it becomes
clear that chemical engineering design has to utilise the syn-
thesis power of nature. Although bio-resource conversion of
solar radiation is low, biogenic raw materials offer highly com-
plex constituents on the macroscopic level (e.g. fibres) as well
as on the molecular level (e.g. proteins, bio-catalysts, etc.).
This offers the chance to use the synthesis power of nature to
provide complex goods using a short production chain from
raw material to final product. Without taking the detour of
breaking a raw material down to the molecular level and then
to synthesise a complex molecule the ecological pressures
(and often the economic costs, too) of providing a product may
be lower.
In order to take advantage of natural synthesis power
chemical engineering must optimise existing and develop
innovative technologies to separate complex organic mixtures
and extract high value products from complex matrices under
mild conditions that do not deteriorate their quality. This may
require a strong focus on membrane separation processes as
well as on chromatographic technologies, both in research and
in education.
From a design point of view an additional level of decision
will become more important in sustainable development: is
it more advantageous to use specific biogenic raw materials
and employ complex separation and extraction methods or
unspecific, low quality resources employing complex synthe-
sis technologies? This question again can only be answered
looking at the whole life cycle.
3.4. Generalising the refinery concept
Oil refineries have always been a topic of considerable inter-
est to chemical engineers. Their basic concept is to utilise
a complex raw material fully by generating a broad product
portfolio that serves a variety of business sectors and social
needs, from mobility (fuels) to energy provision (heavy oils) to
civil engineering (asphalt) to mechanical engineering (lubri-
cants) to packaging (polymers) and finally also providing heat
and electricity. This concept will become central for chemical
engineering for sustainable development. It will be transferred
to utilisations of raw materials other than crude oil, notably
bio-resources.
The concept of bio-refineries was coined by Carlsson (1983),
in connection to full utilisation of green biomass, a line of
development that had been carried further by other authors
(e.g. Kromus et al., 2002; Kamm et al., 2006). Since the mid
1990ies a considerable body of research and technical devel-
opment was dedicated to the development of various forms
 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028
Fig. 2 – Green Bio-refinery concept flow sheet (adapted from
Mandl et al., 2006): full lines: realised processes, broken
lines: realised products, dotted lines: potential processes
and products, light grey: separation processes.
of bio-refinery concepts based on different bio-resources. A
broad overview of different bio-refinery approaches may be
taken from the homepage of the BIOPOL project.
The general idea of bio-refineries requires to design pro-
cesses that utilise abundant surplus raw materials (e.g. grass,
low grade forest products, algae, etc.) or waste streams (from
food industry, bio-waste from households, etc.), first extract-
ing high value constituents (e.g. proteins, fibres, etc.) then
using building blocks of lower molecular complexity (e.g. sug-
ars) to synthesise bulk chemicals (bio-fuels, bio-polymers), use
the residues from these process steps to provide energy and
finally bring the waste flows (bio-gas manure, ashes) into a
form that allows re-integration into agriculture and land man-
agement. Fig. 2 exemplifies such a bio-refinery based on green
biomass (Green Bio-refinery).
A side effect of applying the refinery concept to bio-
resources in particular is an increase in economic flexibility.
The broader the product portfolio generated by such a bio-
refinery, the larger is the leeway for cross-financing between
different products, with high price products supporting prod-
ucts with lower profit margins. This will help to stabilise the
economic stability of such bio-refineries.
3.5. Adapting process design to spatial and temporal
context
The more industry must rely on renewable resources the more
it will have to adapt to their characteristic properties. Almost
all renewable resources (with the notable exception of geother-
mal energy) are time dependent in their availability, either in
seasonal manner (as most bio-resources) or as consequence of
weather dependency (like wind power and photovoltaic). All
resources based on solar income are moreover de-centrally
available, a critical break with the current reliance of industry
on point sources like mines, oil and gas fields. This requires
chemical engineering to integrate spatial and temporal con-
text into the design of sustainable industrial processes.
Taking life cycle wide designing seriously this means to
integrate transport and storage into process design. Transport
becomes important when raw materials show low transport
densities and/or high water content and are de-centrally pro-
vided. This is true for many biogenic materials, especially for
those that are less contested because of their lower quality
and are therefore of particular interest to industry. Taking
2025
Fig. 3 – Transport distance with characteristic means of
transportation using 1% of the energy content of various
raw materials.
humidity and transport density into account the fraction of
the energy content used to transport fossil or biogenic mate-
rials varies widely (see Fig. 3). By and large, this means that
the lower the quality of the raw material, the closer and more
regional the resource logistic must become.
Following this reasoning leads to another conclusion:
industrial processes using bio-resources have to adapt to the
raw material base of provided in their spatial context. This
has additional implications for design of industrial processes.
As biogenic raw material supply varies with geographical con-
text design of industrial processes providing similar products
must become more varied, too. It has to accommodate raw
materials with widely differing properties and content.
Another implication of this regional context of industrial
processes is the need for a wide margin of flexibility for the
raw materials utilised in a particular industrial site. Natural
variations in bio-resources as well as requirements of sus-
tainable land management that limit mono-cultures in order
to retain fertility will call for flexible processes that can han-
dle wide variations of raw material qualities, at least as far
as processes are concerned that utilise primary biogenic raw
materials coming directly from the fields, grass lands, forests
or that utilise waste flows from society or other industries.
This flexibility regarding raw material quality will also help
industry to cope with temporal variations of raw material sup-
ply, as resources may be available in seasonal variations.
Including logistic considerations into the design of sus-
tainable industrial processes on the base of bio-resources
has also implications regarding the optimal size of indus-
trial plants. Using classical fossil or mineral resources with
high transport densities provided by point sources is a basic
assumption for the universal application of the principle of
economy of scale. Using de-centrally supplied raw materials
with unfavourable transport properties requires balancing the
economic as well as ecological impact of the much increased
transport demand with the gain in efficiency by increased size
of plants. Gwehenberger et al. (2007) argue that this may lead
to considerably smaller plant sizes, especially when low grade
resources are used either as raw material or energy source.
All this factors will bring about a considerable change in the
structure of process industry. It will include more de-central
sites of significantly smaller size. These de-central industrial
sites will have to be fully adapted to regional context, in terms
of the resources they use, the management of by-products
they generate and the energy services they may offer in addi-
tion to their products.
2026 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028

For the profession of chemical engineers this means a Meeting societal demand on the base of intermittent supply
much larger workload as more plants have to be planned (as will require significant management effort that may on the
the size of plants may decrease), more processes have to be one hand provide good economic opportunities and on the
developed (adapting them to different regional contexts) and other hand must reduce ecological impact of energy provi-
these processes have to be designed to utilise a large raw mate- sion. Realising the potential of grid-overarching technologies
rial portfolio. In general process design and operation has to (e.g. combined heat and power plants, biogas and biomass
become highly flexible regarding raw material qualities, time gasification plants, Organic Rankine Cycles, etc.) within indus-
dependent availability of resources as well as varying demand trial complexes to help stabilise energy distribution grids will
for products and energy services. become a particularly interesting and possibly also rewarding
aspect of chemical engineering design.
3.6. Design for integrated technology networks
4. Equipping chemical engineers for
The broader scope of designing life cycles is already one aspect sustainable development
of the fact that stand-alone processes are no longer the con-
cept of industrial development. The paradigm of sustainable
As already mentioned chemical engineers with their strong
development requires looking at all industrial processes as
systemic orientation and their longstanding experience in
inherently linked to each other as well as to the environ-
multidisciplinary co-operation are uniquely positioned to gain
ment and society. Rather than designing and optimising single
as a profession both in terms of increased societal stand-
chemical processes, chemical engineers will in future design
ing and improved job opportunities. The design framework
nodes in technology networks serving society, utilising natu-
discussed above however calls for an overhaul of the skills
ral resources and partaking in the preservation of natural life
and toolkit of chemical engineers in order to realise the
supporting systems.
tremendous opportunities offered by sustainable develop-
This part of the design framework has manifold impli-
ment. The following ideas shall inspire researchers, educators
cations on the development of industrial processes. On a
and practitioners to contribute to this reformation of chemical
purely technical level it means that steps within industrial
engineering to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
processes may be spatially distributed according to their logis-
tical requirements. First steps that derive intermediates with
4.1. Becoming societal change agents
good logistic parameters from primary raw materials may be
realised de-centrally, bringing residues back to the land sup-
It is always more advantageous to ride bulls than being
plying them, taking advantage of low quality bio-resources.
trampled by them. Translated to requirements for chemi-
Plants utilising these intermediates may be located close to
cal engineers in times of change towards sustainability this
consumers, taking advantage of efficiency gains of larger
means that the more they promote the (inevitable) change,
scales.
the more they stand to gain from it. The change towards sus-
Another aspect of designing technology networks is a
tainability will be a societal process, promoting it will therefore
denser linkage between industrial processes and society.
require a sharpening of societal intelligence, communication
Besides the conventional link constituted by the flow of prod-
skills and commitment from the part of chemical engineers.
ucts from industry to consumers, sustainable development
This is of course a task for educators to pair excellent engineer-
will provide additional points of contact by providing waste
ing qualification with equally profound development of social
flows as input from society (including other business sec-
capabilities, offering students pathways to show and deepen
tors) to industry as well as requiring industry to integrate
their commitment to societal progress.
much more into societal energy management. As the former
Chemical engineering however has something to offer to
point has been elaborated already above, we will concentrate
society besides designing sustainable industrial processes.
here on the design implications of energy integration between
Many methodological approaches developed by chemical
society and industry. One obvious exchange route is heat man-
engineers are of crucial importance in the transition to
agement as many industrial processes generate waste heat at
sustainable development. Material and energy balances are
temperature levels that may still be used either in residen-
indispensable for tracing the pathway of substances through
tial heating or other commercial heating purposes (e.g. green
society (Brunner and Rechberger, 2004), process synthesis
house heating, low temperature drying processes, etc.). While
methods may be used to design optimal technology networks
this adds to the responsibility of industry towards society and
to utilise renewable resources in regions (Kettl et al., 2011,
to the complexity of process design, it may realise huge poten-
Nemet et al., 2012), to name just two of these approaches.
tials for resource saving and reduction of overall ecological
Actively offering the unique skills and proven methods of
pressure of society.
chemical engineers to support sustainable development will
One particularly interesting aspect of the role of industrial
certainly improve the position of the profession within society.
processes in societal technology networks is its contribution to
the stability of energy distribution grids. Industrial processes
are usually linked to different energy grids like the electrical 4.2. Exploring new technological frontiers
grid, the gas grid and possibly a local heat distribution grid.
This role as a common node for different grid puts industry Resources determine the technologies used for their utili-
in a unique position to actively participate in managing those sation. As sustainable development will push the resource
grids. It was already argued that a higher share of renewable base for industry more towards renewable resources and bio-
energy sources in the overall energy system will add con- resources will gain particular importance for many chemical
siderable divergence between energy supply (determined by engineering processes the technology portfolio will have to be
time of the day as well as weather) and demand (determined broadened accordingly. The technology development task for
by behaviour of end-users), especially for the electrical grid. chemical engineering will have four dimensions:
 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028
• Focussing on appropriate unit operations: The 20th century
saw tremendous advances in scientific understanding and
technological development of thermo-physical separation
processes and reaction engineering, appropriate for the
mainly fossil resource base of industry. Utilising biogenic
raw materials will require further scientific insight into
and technical development of separation processes based
on membranes, chromatography (especially for high price
products) and surface phenomena as well as bio-reaction
engineering. The goal here is to achieve comparable pre-
dictive power to what we experienced in unit operations
like distillation, extraction and chemical reaction systems
in order to reduce the experimental effort associated with
the development of complex industrial processes.
• Taking a broader process scope into consideration: Chemical
engineers will become responsible for a broader share of
the value chain of renewable resources, including logistic
elements of the life cycle. This will require chemical engi-
neering approaches to storage of bio-resources as well as
to cheap and quick transfer of raw materials with perish-
able content (complex proteins, essential oils, etc.) from
de-central provision sites to chemical plants. Even more
important will be the development of cheap and efficient
technologies handling low grade raw materials (waste flows
like bio-waste, municipal waste water, used vegetable oil,
etc.) and residues from conversion steps (ashes, biogas
manure, etc.).
• Preparing for the change in size: More de-central resources with
disadvantageous transport properties will require smaller
but more conversion sites. This calls for new approaches
regarding serial production of de-central chemical plants
as well as for increasing the efficiency with other means
than increasing the size (such as process intensification, see
below).
• Integrating and Intensifying processes: The change in the raw
material base towards more bio-resources (but possibly also
more gas-processing processes based on natural gas, CO2 ,
etc.) will generally lead to larger equipment, as volume flows
rise (due to lower resource densities and/or increased water
content). A further factor increasing equipment is that pro-
cess parameters will tend towards more mild conditions,
which translates usually in larger apparatuses; finally rates
for bio-reactions in general tend to be lower than those seen
in high concentration, elevated temperature hydrocarbon
reactions. All these aspects call for new approaches to reign
in the size of chemical plants by intensifying processes. In
particular this will require chemical engineering to further
develop heat and material integration, innovative inten-
sification of processes via (bio-)catalysis and approaches
like micro-contacting devices and the exploitation of Nano-
technology.
4.3. Creating innovation networks
The transformation as well as the opportunities for chemi-
cal engineering caused by sustainable development will be
dramatic and will require a quantum leap in the efficiency
of the work of chemical engineers, in particular with regard
to their design practice. One possibility to cope with this
necessity is to intensify the co-operation between professional
actors in the field. There are two fields where this intensifi-
cation is particularly important: linking education to practice
and co-operation on pilot plant experiments. The former is
a key area for preparing future chemical engineers for their
2027
professional careers and improving their qualifications to
meet the challenges of sustainable development. The lat-
ter will help to advance crucial innovation as the progress
from lab-scale to pilot plant very often is a limiting step
in the development of new industrial processes. As sustain-
able development calls for massive technological innovation
(with an equally taunting capital requirement) flexible pilot
plant centres that serve interested actors from business and
academia will help to reduce costs of innovation and will thus
speed up the necessary technological development.
4.4. Developing innovative process design instruments
for chemical engineers
Sustainable development challenges chemical engineers to
develop innovative processes that adapt to spatial context
and integrate into complex technology networks. Meeting
this challenge will require further innovation of methods
and instruments that support chemical engineers in their
design tasks. Building on existing methods for process integra-
tion (e.g. Klemeš et al., 2010), process synthesis (e.g. Friedler
et al., 1995), flowsheet optimisation (e.g. Novak-Pintaric
and Kravanja, 2006) and ecological process evaluation (e.g.
Krotscheck and Narodoslawsky, 1996) the toolbox of chem-
ical engineers will have to enable them to design systemic
solutions that utilise renewable resources while reducing envi-
ronmental pressures of industry.
5. Conclusions
Sustainable development will generate formidable challenges
but also huge chances for chemical engineers in the 21st cen-
tury. Finite fossil resources combined with the necessity to
reduce environmental pressure of human society, in particular
with regard to global climate change, will lead to a profound
change in the resource base of industry. Renewable sources
for energy and material will become more important and will
require a massive re-structuring of industrial processes.
Renewable resources show distinctly different characteris-
tics compared to the current prevalent fossil and mineral raw
materials. They are de-centrally provided, often in an intermit-
tent manner. New market structures will evolve in particular
for bio-resources as competition for them will intensify at the
same time as requirements for retaining the function of life
supporting ecosystems will require particular care in their
production.
All these factors will shape the structure of future indus-
trial processes. Smaller, more flexible and more varied
processes will allow to adapt industry to spatial context that
becomes inevitably important with de-central resources. Sys-
temic technology networks will increase resource efficiency.
Industrial processes will have to integrate complex logistic
systems to provide them with renewable resources. Innova-
tive technologies will enable industry to draw on the synthetic
power of nature to generate high value products.
The necessity to reduce environmental impacts as well
as the requirements to participate in the management of
limited resources, even if they are renewable, will lead to
a much enlarged scope for industrial processes. Thinking
in life cycles, technology networks and interaction with the
environment and society will become the future frame-
work for chemical engineering practice. Ecological assessment
will have to become an integral part of chemical engineer-
ing design right from the beginning, on par with economic
2028 chemical engineering research and design 9 1 ( 2 0 1 3 ) 2021–2028
considerations and safety requirements. This however
requires appropriate assessment tools and measures that
provide quantative parameters that engineers can use in their
design task.
All these factors will have profound impacts on the way
chemical engineers design processes. With their already
high emphasise on interdisciplinarity and with a number of
methodological approaches that are indispensable for sus-
tainable development of society, chemical engineers are in
a prime position not only to thrive but to shape the future.
In order to realise this potential chemical engineers must
embrace the change towards sustainability, drive the tech-
nological innovation that facilitates this change and act as
change agents, bringing their skills to bear in the development
of sustainable industrial processes as well as in support of the
overall societal change.
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