Development of an economically viable process for dehydration of biobased glycerol

An economically viable process for the production of industrially important C₃ compounds from biobased glycerol was developed. A simple methodology for integrating environmental impact analysis into the standard heuristics of conceptual process design was presented. This methodology was illustrated using the conceptual process development as the glycerol dehydration process as a case study example. The application of the proposed methodology holds potential for significant contributions to economic and environmental sustainability by the development of novel conceptual processes which are based on cost effective, renewable raw materials. This methodology can be used to ensure that conceptual processes developed using a hierarchical approach based on standard design heuristics will be optimized based on not only economic potential, but also the minimization of the potential environmental impact. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the AIChE Spring National Meeting (New Orleans LA 4/6-10/2008).