Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615

www.elsevier.nl/locate/wasman

The waste reduction (WAR) algorithm: environmental impacts,

energy consumption, and engineering economics
Douglas Young *, Richard Scharp, Heriberto Cabezas
United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Sustainable Technology Division,
Systems Analysis Branch, Cincinnati, OH 45268, USA

Received 14 February 2000; accepted 9 March 2000

Abstract
A general theory known as the waste reduction (WAR) algorithm has been developed to describe the ¯ow and the generation of
potential environmental impact through a chemical process. The theory de®nes indexes that characterize the generation and the
output of potential environmental impact from a process. The existing theory has been extended to include the potential environ-
mental impact of the energy consumed in a chemical process. Energy will have both an environmental impact as well as an eco-
nomic impact on process design and analysis. Including energy into the analysis of environmental impact is done by re-writing the
system boundaries to include the power plant which supplies the energy being consumed by the process and incorporating the
environmental e€ects of the power plant into the analysis. The e€ect of this addition on the original potential impact indexes will be
discussed. An extensive engineering economic evaluation has been included in the process analysis which inherently contains the
cost of the consumed energy as an operating cost. A case study is presented which includes a base process design and two mod-
i®cations to the base design. Each design is analyzed from an economic perspective and an environmental impact perspective. The
environmental impact analysis is partitioned into the impacts of the non-product streams and the impacts of the energy generation/
consumption process. The comparisons of these analysis procedures illustrate the consequences for decision making in the design of
environmentally friendly processes. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

1. Introduction ted within this area. Heat exchange networks led to

Incorporating pollution prevention techniques into
chemical process design has received more attention in
recent years. This concept entails taking into considera-
tion the environmental concerns, beyond the demands
of regulation, of the chemical process in the design
stage. Historically, the economics, operating and capi-
tal, of the chemical process were the predominant issues
in the design stage [1±3] with little regard towards
environmental concerns or pollution prevention.
The concept of pollution prevention was ®rst presented
in the 1970s via heat exchange networks (HENs). These
were employed to help reduce the energy consumption of
manufacturing processes. Shenoy [4] and Gundersen and
Naess [5] provide reviews on the research that has sprou-
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-513-569-7624; fax: +1-513-569-
7111.
E-mail address: young.douglas@epa.gov (D. Young).
0956-053X/00/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
PII: S0956-053X(00)00047-7
innovation known as mass exchange networks (MENs)
which were ®rst introduced by El-Halwagi and Manou-
siouthakis [6]. The idea behind MENs is to concentrate
pollutants in selected waste streams while purifying
other streams. This results in reducing the volume of
waste generated within a process that would require
further treatment. Both of these techniques focus on
reduction to accomplish pollution prevention. Reduc-
tions in energy usage and waste treatment generally
improve the economics of the process as well.
Whereas reduction in energy usage has obvious con-
sequences, less pollution and lower operating costs,
reduction in waste does not necessarily have the same
obvious result. It is quite conceivable that one design for
a process has less waste than another design, but that
waste could have a greater impact on the environment
than the waste from the latter design. Evaluating the
environmental impact of wastes from a chemical process
can be accomplished by the waste reduction (WAR)
algorithm. The WAR Algorithm was ®rst developed by
606 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615
Nomenclature
PEI potential environmental impact
I:t the total PEI in the overall system (PEI)
Iin…cp† the PEI entering the chemical process (PEI/
: h)
Iout…cp† the PEI leaving the chemical process (PEI/
: h)
Iin…ep† the PEI entering the energy generation
: facility (PEI/h)
Iout…ep† the PEI leaving the energy generation facil-
: ity (PEI/h)
Iwe…cp† the PEI emitted from a chemical process
: associated with the waste energy (PEI/h)
Iwe…ep† the PEI emitted from a energy generation
facility associated with the waste energy
: (PEI/h)
Igen…t† the total PEI generated within the system
: (PEI/h)
I: in…t† the total PEI entering the system (PEI/h)
Iout…t† the total PEI leaving the system (PEI/h)
Hilaly and Sikdar [7]. The original version of the WAR
algorithm introduced the concept of a pollution balance
which was strictly mass based. Cabezas et al. [8] intro-
duced the generalized WAR algorithm with a potential
environmental impact (PEI) balance, which assigned
environmental impact values to di€erent pollutants, as
an improvement upon the original WAR algorithm.
Young and Cabezas [9] extended the PEI balance to
incorporate the consumption of energy by the chemical
process into the environmental evaluation. From the
PEI balance, PEI indexes are calculated which provide a
relative indication of the environmental friendliness or
unfriendliness of the chemical process.
Other researchers have devised di€erent methodolo-
gies for incorporating environmental considerations
into chemical process design. These methodologies are
reviewed extensively by Cano-Ruiz and McRae [10].
Most commonly, environmental concerns are treated as
constraints in an economic optimization problem where
the constraints are designated by regulations. Minimiz-
ing the amount of waste or pollutants generated within
a process is another common method to incorporate
environmental considerations into process design [10].
A number of index type methods have been imple-
mented to evaluate the environmental impact of the
emissions of chemical processes: Houghton et al. [11]
proposed an index for global warming de®ned as the
emissions rate multiplied by the global warming poten-
tial of that chemical relative to CO2; Grossman et al.
[12] proposed a toxicity index by multiplying the e‚uent
¯ow rate of a chemical by the inverse of its LD50 value;
:
Ii;in…t† the total PEI entering the system associated
: with impact category i (PEI/h)
I i;out…t† the total PEI leaving the system associated
with impact category i (PEI/h)
I^out…t† the total PEI leaving the system normalized
to the production rate (PEI/kg products)
I^gen…t† the total PEI generated within the system
normalized to the production rate (PEI/kg
: products)
Mj;in the mass ¯ow rate of stream j into the sys-
: tem (kg/hr)
Mj;out the mass ¯ow rate of stream j out of the
: system (kg/h)
Pp the mass ¯ow rate of product stream p (kg/
h)
xkj the mass fraction of chemical k in stream j
(dimensionless)
i the weighting factor associated with impact
category i (dimensionless)
s
ki the speci®c PEI of chemical k associated
with impact category i (PEI/kg chemical k)
Fathi-Afshar and Yang [13] proposed an index for gas-
eous emissions by dividing the e‚uent ¯ow rates of the
chemicals by their threshold limit values as de®ned by
the ACGIH and then multiplied by their speci®c vapor
pressures; Heinzle et al. [14] and Koller et al. [15] proposed
ecological indices based on a classi®cation approach to
assess the environmental impact of a process. Pistiko-
poulos et al. [16] proposed relative environmental
impact indexes for multiple categories, i.e. air pollution,
water pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, pho-
tochemical oxidation, and solid wastes, and optimized
the process for each impact category. The PEC/PNEC
(predicted environmental concentation/predicted no
e€ect concentration) ratio has also been used to evalu-
ate the environmental impact of a process design [10].
King et al. [17] used case base reasoning to evaluate the
environmental impact of a process design which relies
on past experience.
This paper presents an illustrative case study that
demonstrates the use of the WAR algorithm in con-
junction with a detailed economic evaluation to design a
chemical process that is environmentally friendly and
economically bene®cial. The case study will present three
designs: an original design and two modi®ed designs.
ASPEN PLUS 10.1 [18] process simulator was used to
simulate the process designs. ICARUS Process Evaluator
(IPE) [19] was used to evaluate the capital and operating
costs of the process designs. [Use of ASPEN PLUS 10.1
and ICARUS Process Evaluator in this research does not
imply United States Environmental Protection Agency
(USEPA) endorsement of these products.]
 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615
2. Theory
The WAR algorithm is a methodology used to evalu-
ate the relative environmental impact of a chemical
process. It is not a life cycle analysis (LCA) tool. It only
considers the manufacturing aspect of the product's life
cycle; it does not consider the other life cycle stages: raw
material acquisition, product distribution, product use,
product disposal, and product recycle. This methodol-
ogy can be used in either the design stage of a future
process or in the retro®tting of a current process.
A detailed discussion of the WAR theory is presented
by Young and Cabezas [9]. For sake of clarity, a sum-
mary of the theory will be presented here.
2.1. Potential environmental impact theory
The potential environmental impact of a given quan-
tity of material and energy can be generally de®ned as
the e€ect that this material and energy would have on
the environment if they were to be emitted into the
environment. This implies that a release has not occur-
red, but if it did, it would have a quanti®able e€ect, the
potential environmental impact. This quantity is prob-
abilistic in nature and will in reality deviate from the
observed values. Potential environmental impact is a
conceptual quantity that cannot be measured directly.
However, it can be estimated from measurable or
estimable quantities [9].
Cabezas et al. [8,20] have proposed that a potential
environmental impact balance is required to incorporate
environmental e€ects into process design. In their
research, they included only the environmental e€ects of
the materials entering and leaving a manufacturing
process into their potential environmental impact (PEI)
balance. In these papers, the system boundaries for the
PEI balance were drawn around the manufacturing
process. Young and Cabezas [9] improved on that bal-
ance by incorporating the consumption of energy into
the PEI balance as depicted in Fig. 1. They were able to
do this by drawing the system boundary around both
the manufacturing process and the energy generation
facility (electric power generating utility). The potential
environmental impact balance including energy is
described by the expression,
@It : …cp† : …ep† : …cp† : …ep† : …cp† : …ep† : …t†
ˆ Iin ‡I in ÿIout ÿIout ÿIwe ÿIwe ‡I gen …1†
@t
where It is the amount of potential environmental
impact inside the system
: (chemical
: process plus energy
generation process), Iin…cp† and Iout…cp† are the input and
output rates of potential
: environmental
: impact to the
chemical process, Iin…ep† and Iout…ep† are the input and
output rates of potential environmental
: : impact to the
energy generation process, Iwe…cp† and I we…ep† are the out-
607
puts of potential environmental impact associated with
waste energy (denoted by the subscript we) lost from the
chemical
: process and the energy generation process, and
where I …t†
gen is the rate of generation of
: potential envir-
onmental impact inside the system. I…t† gen represents the
creation and consumption of potential environmental
impact by chemical reactions inside the chemical pro-
cess and the power plant.
For steady state processes, Eq. (1) reduces to
: : : : : : :
0 ˆ I in…cp† ‡ Iin…ep†ÿI out…cp†ÿIout…ep†ÿIwe…cp†ÿIwe…ep† ‡ I…t†
gen …2†
The waste energy emissions of both the chemical pro-
cess and the energy generation process will be neglected
since these will have minor impacts when compared to
the amount of energy and materials that are consumed
and produced through non-fugitive streams. Also, the
impact of the input streams (coal, air, and water) to the
energy process will be neglected for reasons discussed by
Young and Cabezas [9]. To summarize the explanation,
the coal stream which contains a multitude of organic
and metallic compounds is considered to have a negli-
gible impact since these components are stabilized in a
solid matrix so that they are not normally bioavailable
to humans and animals.
This reduces Eq. (2) to
: : : :
0 ˆ I in…cp† ÿIout…cp† ÿIout…ep† ‡ I …t†
gen …3†
This can be re-written yet again as
: : …t† : …t†
0 ˆ I …t†
in ÿI out ‡ I gen …4†
:
where I…t†
in is de®ned as the total potential environmental
impact that resides in the mass inputs to the manu-
facturing/energy generation process (see Fig. 1) and is
approximated solely by the impacts from : the inputs: to
the chemical manufacturing process, Iin…cp† . I…t† out is
de®ned as the total potential environmental impact that
resides in the mass outputs from the manufacturing/
Fig. 1. The incorporation of energy into the potential environmental
impact calculations or the WAR algorithm.
608 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615

energy generation processes and is approximated solely where I^…t†

out is the :PEI output index with units of PEI/kg
by the impacts from outputs : …cp† from both the chemical of product and Pp is the mass ¯ow rate of the product
manufacturing : process, I out , and the energy genera- streams.
tion facility, Iout…ep† . A similar transformation can be made to convert the
PEI generation index into terms of PEI/kg of product
2.2. Potential environmental impact indexes
:
: I…t†
gen
The input potential environmental impact index, I…t†
in , I^…t†
gen ˆ ProdStreams …8†
P :
can be approximated by known and measurable quan- Pp
tities by p

: X : …t†
EnvCat X Streams
EnvCat X : Comps
X where I^…t†
gen is the PEI generation index with units of PEI/
I…t†
in ˆ  i I i;in ˆ  i Mj;in xkj s
ki …5† kg of product.
i i j k
The intended use of the WAR algorithm is to provide
a means for comparing the potential environmental
where i is the weighting factor :associated potential impact of alternative designs for a process. In the WAR
environmental impact: category i, I…t†
i;in is the PEI input algorithm, the four indexes shown in Eqs. (7) and (8),
index for category i, Mj;in is the mass ¯ow rate of input : :
I…t† ^…t† …t† ^…t†
out ; I out ; I gen ; and I gen , are used to compare the envir-
stream j, xkj is the mass fraction of component k in
stream j, and ski is the speci®c potential environmental onmental friendliness of the possible process designs.
impact of component k associated with environmental Designs with lower PEI index values represent more
impact category i. environmentally desirable designs.
: The output potential environmental impact index,
I…t†
out , can be approximated in a similar fashion. 2.3. Speci®c chemical environmental impacts

: X : …t†
EnvCat The WAR algorithm uses eight environmental impact
I…t†
out ˆ i Ii;out categories in its evaluation. Those categories are
i
X
EnvCat X
NPStreams
: X
Comps 1. Human toxicity potential by ingestion (HTPI),
s
ˆ i Mj;out xkj ki …6† 2. Human toxicity potential by exposure both dermal
i j k
and inhalation (HTPE),
: 3. Terrestrial toxicity potential (TTP),
where
: I…t†
i;out is the PEI output index for category i and 4. Aquatic toxicity potential (ATP),
Mj;out is the mass ¯ow rate of: the non-product output 5. Global warming potential (GWP),
stream j. In the calculation of I…t† out only the non-product 6. Ozone depletion potential (ODP),
streams (NP Streams) are taken into consideration. This 7. Photochemical oxidation potential (PCOP), and
insures that the user or producer is not directly penalized 8. Acidi®cation potential (AP).
for producing a chemical that has a high PEI value. The
user or producer will be penalized though if this high The PEI evaluation of these categories is discussed in
PEI valued chemical is not completely recovered in one detail by Young and Cabezas [9].
of the products and/or in the by-products of this process
also
: have a high PEI value. The PEI generation index, 2.4. Weighting factors
I…t†
gen , can then be calculated from Eqs. (4)±(6).
Two types of environmental impact indexes are used Weighting factors are used to combine PEI categories
to evaluate the environmental friendliness of a chemical into a single PEI index. They represent the relative or
process: PEI output indexes and PEI generation site-speci®c concerns of the user. For instance, if the
indexes. The output indexes can be evaluated on a rate user was evaluating a process that was located in the
basis, PEI/h, or on a production basis, PEI/kg of pro- Los Angeles area the weighting factor for smog forma-
duct. The indexes presented so far are in terms of rate tion (PCOP) would probably receive a high value.
evaluations, PEI/h. To evaluate the PEI output index on Whereas, if the user was evaluating a process in the
a production basis, a simple transformation can be made Northeast the weighting factor for acid rain (AP) would
probably receive a high value. This paper discusses an
: illustrative case study with no speci®c site in mind. For
I…t†
I^…t†
out ˆ out
…7† this reason, the weighting factors for all categories in
P
ProdStreams :
Pp this case study will be assigned equivalent values of
p unity.
 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615
2.5. Economic evaluation
The economic portion of this investigation was
accomplished with the IPE [19]. IPE is a state-of-the-art
software tool that allows the user to size and cost a
complete chemical manufacturing process. IPE uses
standard design codes to size the processing equipment,
such as ASME, API, ANSI, TEMA, NEMA, BS5500,
JIS, DIN, etc. IPE evaluates the capital costs of a pro-
cess by using expert system databases; it does not use
the factor method. IPE will also evaluate the operating
costs associated with a chemical process. Again, these
costs are estimated through expert system databases.
3. Case study
The case study that will be investigated in this paper is
an allyl chloride production facility [3]. The process ¯ow
diagram (PFD) is shown in Fig. 2. A natural gas furnace
is used to heat the propylene feed stream which is mixed
with the chlorine feed stream and sent to a ¯uidized-bed
reactor. The reactor operates at 511 C and about 3 bar.
In the reactor, allyl chloride and hydrogen chloride are
the primary products [Eq. (9)]; however, 2-chlor-
opropene [Eq. (10)] and 2,3-dichloropropene [Eq. (11)]
are signi®cant by-products of the reaction. A series of
Fig. 2. The process ¯ow diagram of the allyl chloride production facility.
609
heat exchangers are employed to reduce the temperature
of the reactor e‚uent to approximately ÿ50 C. The
¯ash drum is used to remove approximately 80% of the
HCl. The hydrogen chloride is absorbed by de-ionized
water to produce 31.5% HCl. The vapor stream leaving
the absorber is primarily propylene which is compressed
and heated before recycling. The liquid from the ¯ash
drum is sent through a series of distillation towers to
separate allyl chloride from the other chlorinated by-
products. The ®rst two towers are used to recover any
HCl and propylene that was present in the liquid e‚u-
ent of the ¯ash drum. The primary product streams of
this process are the allyl chloride stream and the 31.5%
HCl product stream. The 2-chloropropene and the 2,3-
dichloropropene by-product streams can either be sold,
if the purity is >95 wt.%, or be treated as waste.
C3 H6 ‡ Cl2 ! CH2 ˆ CHCH2 Cl ‡ HCl …9†
C3 H6 ‡ Cl2 ! CH2 ˆ CClCH3 ‡ HCl …10†
C3 H6 ‡ 2Cl2 ! CH2 ˆ CClCH2 Cl ‡ 2HCl …11†
This process requires refrigeration. The third heat
exchanger after the reactor and the condensers of the
®rst three distillation towers all require e‚uent stream
610 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615

temperatures less than 0 C. Due to the amount of both direct energy and indirect energy requirements.
refrigeration required, this process is extremely energy Direct energy is the energy required to operate pumps
intensive. Propylene is used as the refrigerant in this and compressors. Indirect energy results from the use of
case study. The PFD for the refrigeration portion of the utility ¯uids (cooling water, low pressure steam, boiler
process is not shown, but is considered in the environ- feed water, and natural gas). Utility ¯uids are brought
mental and economic analysis. into the process at non-standard conditions (25 C and 1
In this case study, three process designs are con- bar). Indirect energy describes the energy that is
sidered: the base design as shown in Fig. 2 (unit 600) required to transfer the ¯uid from standard conditions
and two alternative designs (units 601 and 602). The to the conditions used in the process. In this illustrative
®rst alternative process design (unit 601) addresses the case study, heat integration has not been considered.
energy consumption issue. For this design option, the Again, indirect energy calculations are used only for the
operating parameters have been adjusted to reduce the environmental evaluations (WAR algorithm).
amount of refrigeration required for this process. This
was accomplished by increasing the operating pressure in
the distillation towers (see Table 1 for the pertinent oper- 4. Results and discussion
ating parameters of all three processes). By increasing the
pressure in the system, the ¯ash drum, one heat exchanger A combined environmental and economic evaluation
(the third one after the reactor), and the propylene dis- of the allyl chloride production process has been per-
tillation tower could be removed from the PFD. One formed for the base design (unit 600) and two alter-
compressor was added to increase the pressure of the native designs (units 601 and 602). The environmental
reactor e‚uents; this was added between the ®rst and analysis was completed using the WAR Algorithm, and
second heat exchanger after the reactor. the economic analysis was completed using the com-
The second alternate process design (unit 602) inves- mercial software ICARUS Process Evaluator.
tigates improving the yield of allyl chloride in the reac-
tor while including the improvements used in unit 601. Table 2
The kinetics of this system are such that the yield of allyl Revenue and expenses of the feed and product streams of the allyl
chloride can be increased by lowering the reactor tem- chloride production case study
perature. For this illustrative case study, a reactor tem-
Stream ($/kg)
perature of 470 C was chosen. No other modi®cations
were made to unit 602. Revenue
All three process design options were designed to Allyl chloride product stream 1.72a
31.5 wt.% HCl product stream 0.08a
maintain the process speci®cations: (1) the allyl chloride 2-Chloropropene by-product stream 0.10b
product stream must have a minimum purity of 99.9 2,3-Dichloropropene by-product stream 0.15b
mol%, (2) the HCl product stream must be 31.5 wt%,
Expense
(3) the 2-chloropropene byproduct stream must have a Chlorine feed stream 0.28a
minimum purity of 95 mol%, and (4) the 2,3-dichlor- Propylene feed stream 0.31a
opropene byproduct stream must have a minimum pur- De-ionized water feed stream 0.001b
ity of 95 mol%. The revenue/expense for each of the HCl waste stream 0.40b
feed and product streams is listed in Table 2. a
Values obtained from the 21 January 2000 edition of Chemical
For the WAR algorithm evaluation, the energy con- Market Reporter.
sumed by the process was calculated by considering b
Values obtained from Turton et al. [3].

Table 1
Pertinent operating parameters for the three possible designs of the allyl chloride production case study: the base design (unit 600), two alternative
designs (units 601 and 602)

Pertinent operating parameters Unit 600 Unit 601 Unit 602

Reactor temperature ( C) 511 511 470

Pressure in HCl tower (bar) 1.4±1.5 7.5±7.6 7.5±7.6
Pressure in 2-chloropropene tower (bar) 1.4±1.5 6.0±6.1 6.0±6.1
Molar re¯ux ratio in HCl tower 0.0667 0.458 0.478
Molar re¯ux ratio in 2-chloropropene tower 56.6 81.4 84.0
Direct energy consumed in refrigeration process (MW) 1.97 0.411 0.412
Direct energy consumed in the total process (MW) 2.14 0.698 0.696
Flow rate of allyl chloride product stream (kg/h) 1190 1190 1300
Flow rate of 2-chloropropene by-product stream (kg/h) 35.3 34.5 36.0
Flow rate of 2,3-dichloropropene by-product stream (kg/h) 203 206 121
 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615 611

The potential environmental impact (PEI) of each of been chosen, these results could have possibly been dif-
the chemicals involved in the process is shown in Table ferent. Also, since the feed streams for all three designs
3 with each of the impact categories listed. In this case are very similar only the output indexes will be used in
study, none of the chemicals used contribute sig- the environmental :evaluation of this case study. If the
ni®cantly to ozone depletion (ODP) so that category has PEI input index, I…t†in , is: consistent
: …t† among all possible
been omitted from this table. The PEI values for each of designs, then by Eq. (4) I…t†out and I gen will reveal the same
the chemicals is given in terms of PEI/kg; the PEI values information.
for the energy consumption is given in terms of PEI/ From Table 3, it can be seen that allyl chloride, 2-
MWh. Thus, the values are not directly comparable. chloropropene, 2,3-dichloropropene, and hydrogen
The PEI values are presented to two signi®cant ®gures; chloride are the signi®cant contributors to both HTPI
this is the maximum amount of signi®cant ®gures that and TTP. They all have approximately equal impact for
should be used in the WAR analysis. Due to inherent those categories. The power consumption also plays a
uncertainties in the environmental data, only one or two signi®cant role in those categories. For acidi®cation
signi®cant ®gures should be used in this analysis. From potential (AP), the power consumption is the most sig-
Table 3, it can be seen that chlorine is the chemical that ni®cant contributor and hydrogen chloride has only a
will have the greatest environmental impact. In all three secondary in¯uence on that category. Overall, the AP
designs chlorine is the limiting reagent and is consumed generated by the consumption of electricity is the pri-
almost entirely in the reactor. mary concern of the base design from an environmental
Now, let us examine the base design (unit 600). The perspective. As an aside, the chlorine has a very high
results of the economic evaluation for this design are PEI value for ATP, but it is never realized since chlorine
shown in Table 4. This design generates $18 million/ is almost completely consumed within the reactor and
year of revenue at an operating cost of $9.9 million/ only minute amounts are seen in the e‚uent streams.
year; the total operating pro®t of this design is $8.1 The power consumption of the base design is an
million/year. The grass roots design of the process is obvious area for improvement since it is a signi®cant
estimated to have a capital cost of $23.5 million. concern in both the environmental (Fig. 3) and the eco-
The purpose of the WAR algorithm is to improve the nomic analyses (Table 4). The base design requires sig-
environmental performance of the process while main- ni®cant refrigeration to accomplish the separations in
taining the economic performance. Thus, any suggested
design improvements made by using the WAR algo-
rithm must maintain, if not improve upon, the eco- Table 4
nomics of the original or base design. Consider these to The results of the economic analysis of the allyl chloride production case
study. Bold values represent sums of non-bold values (directly above)
be constraints of using the WAR algorithm.
The WAR algorithm is used to evaluate the environ- (Values in million $/year) Unit 600 Unit 601 Unit 602
mental friendliness of the base design (unit: 600). The Revenue from allyl chloride stream 16.3 16.3 17.9
PEI output index for each of the categories, I…t†
i;out , [from Revenue from other streams 1.7 1.7 1.6
Eq. (6)] for the base design is shown in Fig. 3. From this Total operating revenue 18.0 18.0 19.5
®gure, it is quite apparent that the major concerns of Cost of feed stocks 5.0 5.0 5.1
this design are human toxicity, terrestrial toxicity, and Operating costs 4.8 4.2 4.3
Cost of waste treatment 0.1 0.1 0.1
acid rain formation. The other impact categories pro- Total operating expense 9.9 9.3 9.5
vide negligible impact compared to these three cate- Net operating pro®t 8.1 8.7 10.0
gories. Remember, these are the result of our uniform
Total capital costs 23.5 20.0 19.9
weighting. If a di€erent set of weighting factors had

Table 3
The potential environmental impact values for each category for the chemicals used in this case study. Values are in PEI/kg unless otherwise stateda

Compound HTPI HTPE ATP TTP GWP PCOP AP Total

Allyl chloride 0.51 5.4e-4 0.10 0.51 0 0 0 1.12

2-Chloropropene 0.61 0 0.0059 0.61 0 0 0 1.23
2,3-Dichloropropene 1.1 0 0.014 1.1 0 0 0 2.21
Hydrogen chloride 0.78 2.3e-4 4.6e-4 0.78 0 0 0.86 2.42
Propylene 0 0 3.1e-2 0 0 2.1 0 2.13
Chlorine 0 5.4e-4 22 0 0 0 0 22
Water 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Power consumption (PEI/MWh) 0.25 0.0053 1.2 0.25 0.67 0 22 24
a
The total was calculated using weighting factors of unity for all categories.
612 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615

:
Fig. 3. The total potential environmental impact output index for each of the impact categories, I…t†
i;out , for the three process designs: the base design
(unit 600), and the two alternative designs (units 601 and 602). HTPE, human toxicity potential by exposure dermal and inhalation, PCOP, photo-
chemical oxidation potential, GWP, global warming potential, ATP, aquatic toxicity potential, AP, acidi®cation potential, HTPI, human toxicity
potential by ingestion, TTP, terrestrial toxicity potential.

this process, and typically, refrigeration units require
large amounts of energy to operate. To reduce this
refrigeration requirement, the pressure in the separation
units was increased. This was the primary improvement
made for the ®rst alternative process design (unit 601).
To change the pressure in the system, some modi®ca-
tions had to be made to the overall process design. First,
a compressor was added between the ®rst and second
heat exchanger in Fig. 2 to accommodate the increase in
system pressure. Next, the third heat exchanger, which
used refrigeration, was removed. The ¯ash drum was
also removed; the preliminary separation achieved in
the ¯ash drum was combined into the HCl tower by
increasing the re¯ux in the tower's condenser. The
operating pressure in the HCl tower was increased from
1.4±1.5 bar to 7.5±7.6 bar. This allowed for the separa-
tion of the HCl and the propylene to occur in the same
vessel. The HCl tower still required refrigeration in the
condenser, but its duty had been reduced. The propy-
lene tower was removed, since the propylene was being
separated in the HCl tower. The pressure in the 2-
Chloropropene Tower was increased from 1.4±1.5 bar
in Unit 600 to 6.0±6.1 bar in unit 601. To meet the same
purity speci®cations, the re¯ux ratio in this tower was
increased by 44%. The allyl chloride tower was oper-
ated under the same conditions as the base design.
This process design (unit 601) only had one unit
which required refrigeration as opposed to four units in
the base design (unit 600). This signi®cantly reduced the
energy consumption of the process as seen in Table 1.
unit 601 requires 67% less energy than Unit 600. This
had signi®cant impacts on both the economic and the
environmental evaluations.
The reduction in energy consumption decreased the
annual operating costs by a modest $600,000. This
reduction is almost entirely ($500,000) due to the amount
of electricity required to operate the compressors in the
refrigeration cycle. The remaining reductions in operat-
ing costs are due to reductions in the amount of utility
¯uids used and reductions in labor force due to fewer
unit operations to monitor. Since nothing else was done
to this process design to change production character-
istics, this $600,000 reduction in operating costs repre-
sents the realized increase in operating pro®ts which is
only a 7.4% improvement.
On the other hand, the process modi®cations had a
much more signi®cant e€ect on the capital cost of the
design (Table 4). The simple process changes reduced
capital costs by $3.5 million or 15% of the base design.
This reduction was a direct result of removing equip-
ment from the design as well as decreasing the size of
existing equipment. For instance, the compressors used
in the refrigeration cycle were considerably smaller in
unit 601 as compared to unit 600.
Figs. 3 and 4 display the environmental comparison
between the base design,: unit 600, and the ®rst alternative
design, unit 601. The I…t†
out decreased from 700 PEI/h in
unit 600 to 620 PEI/hr in unit 601. This is an 11%
 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615
:
Fig. 4. The total potential environmental impact output index, I…t†out , for the three process designs: the base design (unit 600), and the two alternative
designs (units 601 and 602). The contributions to the index attributable to the process e‚uents and to the energy generation e‚uents are indicated.
The values of the indexes are in units of PEI/h.
improvement from an environmental perspective. Fig. 4
distinguishes the potential environmental impact asso-
ciated with the chemical process and the potential envir-
onmental impact associated with the energy generation
process. From this ®gure, it is quite apparent that all
environmental advantages are due simply to reduction in
energy consumption by the chemical process. Fig. 3, breaks
down the PEI into the various impact categories. From this
®gure, the environmental improvement is seen almost
entirely in a reduction of the acidi®cation potential. This
makes sense since the primary PEI concern of the power
generation facility is the acidi®cation potential. Again
these results are directly related to the weighting factor
scheme that was employed in this illustrative case study.
The reduction in the PEI generated by the energy
facility is a noticeable improvement in the process; how-
ever, as Fig. 4 clearly shows, to make a substantial
improvement (reduction) in the environmental perfor-
mance of the overall process the PEI in the process e‚u-
ent streams needs to be reduced. As Table 3 shows, allyl
chloride, 2-chloropropene, 2,3-dichloropropene, hydro-
gen chloride, and propylene all have similar PEI values.
Thus, to reduce the PEI generated within the process
itself those compounds have to be reduced in the by-
product and waste e‚uent streams.
Unit 602 attempts to address the reduction of the by-
product streams by changing the reactor's operating
conditions. The kinetics of the reaction system are such
that lower reactor temperatures favor a greater selec-
tively towards allyl chloride. This was the primary
613
modi®cation in the second alternative process design,
unit 602, from unit 601. Unit 602 used the modi®cations
that were implemented in unit 601 as a basis.
For the purposes of this illustrative case study, the
reactor temperature in unit 602 was decreased to 470 C.
This increased the production rate of allyl chloride, by
9.2%, and reduced the amount of the by-products, 2-
chloropropene and 2,3-dichloropropene. The rate of
hydrogen chloride production remained constant since
its production is directly related to amount of chlorine
consumed in the reactor which in all design options was
consistent. A secondary result of this change in reactor
conditions is that there was a greater conversion of
propylene observed. This is due to the fact that more of
the chlorine was used to make allyl chloride, which
contains only one chlorine atom, and less of the chlorine
was used to make 2,3-dichloropropene, which contains
two chlorine atoms. The direct energy consumed by the
process was almost identical to unit 601.
The second alternative design, unit 602, also had sig-
ni®cant impacts on the economic and environmental
analyses. The added production of allyl chloride incr-
eased the annual operating revenue $1.5 million or 8.3%
over the base design. The total operating expenses for
unit 602 increased slightly as compared to unit 601. This
primarily results from increased feed rate of propylene
required to balance that increased amount of propylene
that was converted in the reactor. However, the net
operating pro®t increased to $10 million annually. This
is a 23% improvement over the initial design.
614 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615

Fig. 5. The total potential environmental impact output index normalized to the allyl chloride production rate, I^…t†
out , for the three process designs:
the base design (unit 600), and the two alternative designs (units 601 and 602). The contributions to the index attributable to the process e‚uents
and to the energy generation e‚uents are indicated. The values of the indexes are in units of PEI/kg of allyl chloride product stream.

The capital costs for unit 602 are almost identical to
those seen in unit 601, which amount to a 15% reduc-
tion over the capital costs required for the base case,
unit 600.
Figs. 3±5 show how unit 602 compares with the other
design options from an environmental viewpoint. Fig. 5
displays values for the PEI output index that has been
normalized to production rate of the allyl chloride
stream, I^…t†
out . Figs. 4 and 5 clearly show that unit 602 has
a much more environmentally friendly design than both
the base design, unit :600, and the ®rst alternative
design, unit 601. The I …t† out has been decreased to 440
PEI/hr from the 700 PEI/hr observed in the base design.
This represents a 37% improvement in the environ-
mental performance. If the change in production is
taken into consideration (Fig. 5), a 43% improvement
in environmental performance is observed. That repre-
sents a decrease from 0.59 PEI/kg allyl chloride product
stream in unit 600 to 0.34 PEI/kg of allyl chloride pro-
duct stream in unit 602. Fig. 3 shows that the HTPI and
the TTP impact categories have been signi®cantly
reduced by the modi®cations made in unit 602.
In this illustrative case study, the importance of con-
currently considering the economic performance of
chemical process as well as the environmental perfor-
mance of the chemical process was shown. There were
two primary areas of concern in this case study: the
refrigeration cycle and the reactor performance. The ®rst
concern addressed the refrigeration cycle. This was an
economic concern that led to improved environmental
performance. The second concern, the reactor perfor-
mance, addressed environmental concerns which also
improved the economic performance. In this case study,
it can be easily concluded that the second alternative
design, unit 602, was superior to both the original
design, unit 600, and the ®rst alternative design, unit
601, in economic and environmental performance.
5. Conclusions
In designing chemical manufacturing processes, it is
imperative that environmental impact analysis be per-
formed in concert with the traditional economic analy-
sis. This point has been demonstrated in great detail
with an illustrative case study. In this case study, a base
process design option was considered along with two
alternative design options. All three designs were eval-
uated from an economic and an environmental view-
point. The second design option, unit 602, was far
superior in both analyses to the other two designs. The
WAR algorithm was used to evaluate the environmental
performance of the process designs; the ICARUS Pro-
cess Evaluator was used to evaluate the economic por-
tion (operating and capital costs) of the case study.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the encouragement
given by Subhas K. Sikdar, the Director of the Sustain-
able Technology Division, and the management at the
National Risk Management Research Laboratory
including E. Timothy Oppelt and Teresa Harten.
 D. Young et al. / Waste Management 20 (2000) 605±615
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