Aguilar-Vásquez Eduardo Andrés, Rojas-Flores Segundo, González-Delgado Ángel Darío
Nanomaterials and Computer Aided Process Engineering Research Group (NIPAC), Universidad de Cartagena, Chemical Engineering Department, Cartagena de Indias 130015, Colombia.
Institutos y Centros de Investigación, Universidad Cesar Vallejo, Trujillo 13001, Peru.
Polymers (Basel). 2025 Sep 6;17(17):2418. doi: 10.3390/polym17172418.
The suspension polymerization process of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production involves significant freshwater consumption alongside substantial wastewater emissions. Mass integration strategies have been used to address this problem, but only through direct recycling approaches. Therefore, in this study, a regeneration approach was applied to integrate a PVC suspension process to improve water management. The reuse network was evaluated through a water-energy-product (WEP) technical analysis after being simulated in AspenPlus software v.14. The mass integration allowed for a 61% reduction in freshwater consumption and an 83% reduction in wastewater. However, 258.6 t/day of residual wastewater still remained after regeneration. The WEP analysis found that the process was efficient in handling raw materials and process products due to the high yield and recovery of unreacted materials. Similarly, the integration significantly benefitted the process performance as water usage indicators improved substantially, with freshwater consumption of 83%, a wastewater production rate of 63%, and freshwater water costs of $267,322 per year (from $694,080 before integration). In terms of energy performance, the results were regular. The processes showed high energy consumption (below 50%), with indicators related to the use of natural gas, electricity, and energy costs being affected by the regeneration. However, the limited heat integration provided minor energy savings (11 MJ/h). Finally, this work gives an interesting insight into water conservation and the circular economy, since the study used the latest systems in regeneration of effluents for plastic plants (emerging technologies), showcasing important benefits and trade-offs of these strategies.
聚氯乙烯（PVC）生产的悬浮聚合过程涉及大量淡水消耗以及大量废水排放。质量集成策略已被用于解决这一问题，但仅通过直接回收方法。因此，在本研究中，应用了一种再生方法来整合PVC悬浮过程以改善水资源管理。在AspenPlus软件v.14中进行模拟后，通过水-能源-产品（WEP）技术分析对回用网络进行了评估。质量集成使淡水消耗减少了61%，废水减少了83%。然而，再生后仍有258.6吨/天的残余废水。WEP分析发现，由于未反应物料的高产率和回收率，该过程在处理原材料和过程产品方面效率较高。同样，整合显著改善了过程性能，因为用水指标大幅提高，淡水消耗减少了83%，废水产生率降低了63%，每年淡水成本为267,322美元（整合前为694,080美元）。在能源性能方面，结果较为正常。这些过程显示出高能耗（低于50%），与天然气、电力使用和能源成本相关的指标受到再生的影响。然而，有限的热集成提供了少量的节能（11兆焦/小时）。最后，这项工作为节水和循环经济提供了有趣的见解，因为该研究使用了塑料厂废水再生的最新系统（新兴技术），展示了这些策略的重要益处和权衡。
