Sustainability lessons from practice: how flow intensification can trigger sustainability and modular plant technology in EU projects

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis are two prime tools that have been used to evaluate the sustainability of novel EU projects, which investigated new strategies to improve product yields and reduce costs, while ensuring a good ecological footprint and cost efficiency. These include EU projects focussed on developing modular, compact production platforms with intensified reactors–such as the F3 Factory, COPIRIDE (combining process intensification-driven manufacture of microstructured reactors and process design regarding to industrial dimensions and environment), POLYCAT (modern polymer-based catalysts and microflow conditions as key elements of innovations in fine chemical synthesis) and SYNFLOW (Innovative Synthesis in Continuous-flow Processes for Sustainable Chemical Production). New projects such as the MAPSYN (Microwave, Acoustic and Plasma assisted SYNtheses) and BIOGO (Catalytic Partial Oxidation of Bio Gas and Reforming of Pyrolysis Oil (Bio Oil) for an Autothermal Synthesis Gas Production and Conversion into Fuels) continue this, but by using alternative energy and a biomass-based, heat-integrated process, respectively. Thus, this paper is a review of EU projects that have carried out LCA and cost analyses and used the results to aid decision-making in the context of process intensification, flow chemistry and modular plants. Copyright © 2015 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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