In 2015, the United Nations adopted 17 sustainable development goals and 169 associated targets as part of the Agenda 2030 to end poverty and hunger, protect the planet and improve the quality of life in harmony with the environment. Goals outlined in the agenda address global issues such as climate change, sustainable economic growth, and fostering innovation. Parallel to Agenda 2030, the rapid increase in energy demands, market competition, globalization and climate change conditions are driving companies to seek new and agile systems and policies. Process Intensification (PI) is an active field in science and engineering that can meet critical targets for Agenda 2030. PI aims to develop novel smaller, cleaner and more energy efficient systems that result in substantial improvements with respect to conventional technologies. Multiple projects have shown that the application of PI concepts leads to substantial economic savings with reduced impact to the environment thus making it an attractive path for sustainable development.
A key initiative in our research group is to utilize PI principles to design new process that can product valuable products or chemical while meeting key sustainability goals, e.g., maintain CO2 emissions or organic substrate discharges below a target. Key intensification systems investigated in our group are aimed at using renewable sources such as biomass to promote power generation under near zero emissions, e.g., chemical looping gasification or combustion units, or the development of valuable products with minimum impact to the environment. Also, we develop novel scheduling and control strategies aimed at improving the operation of PI systems near optimal conditions, e.g., catalytic columns.