The adoption of a sustainability perspective in chemical industry shall start from the early phases of process
design (e.g. conceptual design, technology selection, process development) where the key drivers in the
environmental, economical, and hazard fingerprint of a process are defined. These phases also allow the
opportunities for the lower cost of design change. A sound support of design activities requires quantitative
tools, allowing for the assessment of the sustainability profile of a process, the identification of possible
improvements and supporting informed tradeoffs.
Though several tools for process development were proposed in last decades, application is still limited in the
current practice because of issues on data requirement, indicator definition and customization to specific
application needs (e.g. PFD definition in design of polypropylene production plants).
This study focuses on the application to the early process design of environmental and exergy Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) to support sustainability-oriented design activities. It was tailored on the specific industrial
application of polypropylene production plants. The choice of a specific sector allowed customization of the
method, promoting ease of application and allowing the assessment of multiple scenarios (e.g. sensitivity on
material and energy supply strategies, comparison of different technologies). Results obtained draw up
sustainable guidelines to improve design activities within the scope in a lifecycle perspective
