Computer Aided Solar Energy Based Sustainability Evaluations in Process Design

Abstract

The paper studies the application of emergy analysis into process flowsheeting for sustainability evaluations. Emergy analysis is an energy-focused environmental accounting method that expresses all the process inputs and outputs in solar energy equivalents. Normally the emergy analysis is done separately from flowsheeting but because of growing demand for sustainability evaluations during design, an integrated assessment with flowsheeting would be valuable. Therefore an approach for integrated emergy assessment with process simulation is discussed. The approach is demonstrated by a lignocellulosic ethanol case study.