Eco-Feasibility Study and Application of Natural Inventive Principles in Chemical Engineering Design

The early stages of the front-end process development are critical for the future success of projects involving new technologies. The application of eco-inventive principles identified in natural systems to the design of chemical processes and equipment allows one to find ways to mitigate or avoid secondary ecological problems such as, for example, higher consumption of raw materials or energy, generation of hazardous waste and pollution of the environment by toxic chemicals. However, before implementing a new technology in a real operational environment, it is necessary to completely investigate its undesirable ecological impact and to evaluate the future viability of this technology. Therefore, the research paper presents a study of ecological feasibility of an innovative process design utilising natural eco-inventive principles and analyses the correlations between applied inventive principles. Such eco-feasibility study can be considered as an important decision gate to determine whether the technology implementation should be moved forward. Furthermore, the study evaluates the practicability of natural inventive principles to the eco-friendly process design and is illustrated with an example of a sustainable technology for nickel extraction from pyrophyllite