Process engineering in circular economy--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

Driven by increasing global population and by growing demand for individual wealth, the consumption of energy and raw materials as well as the steadily growing CO₂ concentration in atmosphere pose great challenges to process engineering. This complex multi-scale discipline deals with the transformation of mass by energy to manifold products in different industrial fields under economical and ecological sustainable conditions. In growing circular economy, process engineering increasingly plays an important role in recovering valuable components from very diffuse material flows leaving the user stocks following widely variable time periods of use. As well it is engaged in thermal recovery of energy therefrom and in environmentally safe disposal of residual solid wastes whose recovery economically is not feasible. An efficient recovery of materials and energy following the laws of entropy is a must. A complex network of mass, energy, transportation and information flows has to be regarded with growing traded quantities of used goods even on global level. Important constraints in time, however, exist for a necessary realization of innovative new processes and communal mobility and industrial infrastructure on medium and large scale. Based on reasonable long term and highly reliable statistics from industrial organizations representing steel and paper industry, some limits and trends of possible developments in processing of those industries with long recycling experience will be discussed.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Perspective; Process engineering; Circular economy; Stocks and flows; Energy and material efficiency; Multi-scale systems; PreparationEntropy; Time constraints; Steel industry; Paper industry

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