Analysis of sustainability metrics and application to the catalytic production of higher alcohols from ethanol

Abstract

Use of sustainability metrics can help channel chemical research toward important long-term societalgoals. For effective outcomes, it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the sustaina-bility assessment methods that can be applied in the chemical process development chain. In this paperwe report the results from application of sustainability metrics in parallel with findings from laboratoryresearch for production of higher alcohols from ethanol by application of the Guerbet reaction. 2-Ethyl-1-hexanol is used as an exemplary compound for the targeted higher alcohols. The accuracy of early-stagesustainability metrics using laboratory data is evaluated by comparing the results with metrics based ondetailed process simulation models, techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment. The analysishas provided insights on pitfalls to avoid and effective application of early-stage metrics considering thedynamic nature of information available from laboratory research. Anticipation of the process configu-ration was found to be particularly important for effective application of early-stage metrics. The resultsfrom catalysis research for 2-ethyl-1-hexanol highlight the potential opportunities for higher chain Guer-bet alcohols from biobased ethanol. The comparison of this biobased route with conventional fossil basedprocess shows the challenges for such a process from an economic and environmental perspective.