Engineered Sustainability Development: Analytical Approach and Application to Biodiesel Plant

Biodiesel is considered one of the most promising developments in the field of renewable fuel sources. There are currently several process techniques available for biodiesel production. Due to various alternatives available, there is a necessity for creating methodology that will enable the identification of the most favorable technique. The Sustainability metrics can be used to assess the different alternatives for their environmental, economical, safety, and social implications. An analytical hierarchical process is used to prioritize the comparison parameters based on their degree of importance in reference to the decision to be made. The degree of difference exhibited by the alternatives with respect to each sustainability parameter is used to identify the most suitable alternative for each system under consideration. A decision framework has been created to quantify the SD metrics, perform a differential analytical comparison, and identify the most sustainable alternative from a list of available options.Proposed Technical Approach:

Life cycle assessment of bio diesel to establish the system boundaries and identify alternatives
Sustainability Metrics evaluation for each subsystem.
Prioritization of Comparison parameters (SD Metrics) for each decision to be made.
Prioritization of alternatives with respect to each comparison parameter for each subsystem.
Identification of the most sustainable alternative using Analytical and Differential Hierarchical Process

Engineering for Sustainable Development for Bio-Diesel Production (presentation) by Divya Narayanan