Environmentally Benign Chemical Processes

Basics of typical unit operations (refreshing of background knowledge, if needed by the group).

Green chemistry metrics (green chemistry, green engineering, sustainability; various numerical methods to evaluate and compare reaction routes and processes: environmental factor, environmental quotient, atom efficiency, atom selectivity, stoichiometric factor, intensity parameters, etc.). Risk vs. hazard.   

Designing technologies with lower environmental impact: inherently safer design, the integrated pollution prevention and control directive and its application. Case study: production of nitric acid.

Typical techniques for treating waste waters. Selection of suitable methods based on the contamination. Filtration, flotation, coagulation, sedimentation, extraction, distillation, adsorption, stripping, evaporation, chemical methods in treating of waste waters. Principals of wet air oxidation and supercritical water oxidation. Chemical and biological oxygen demand. 

Fundamentals of vacuum technologies in industrial separation processes: vacuum distillation/evaporation (suitable equipment), short pass distillation, molecular distillation. Effects of residence time distribution. Sublimation, lyophilisation. 

Membrane processes. Classification of membrane processes based on driving force. Balance equations, batch, semicontinuous, continuous setups. Microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, dialysis, electrodialisis, pervaporation, membrane distillation, liquid membranes (principles, understanding the concept of the separations).

Medium and high pressure techniques: distillation at elevated pressures, pressure swing distillation, sterilization of food by pressure.

Principles of supercritical fluid technologies. Basics of their physic-chemistry, properties, solubility. Principles of the typical industrial applications (extraction, particle formation, polymerisation).

Typical technologies to process plants. Steam distillation, cold preesing, solvent extraction, edible oil extraction.

Biofuels. Bioethanol, biogas, biodiesel. Raw material, chemical processing and separation processes.