Michael Overcash 1 Cleaner Production : Basic Principles And Development Michael Overcash* *Pollution Prevention Research Center Chemical Engineering Department Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695-7905 Tel :919~515-2325, Fax : 919-515-3465, E-mail :[email protected] ABSTRACT : Cleaner production is of substantial importance in changing the environmental approach within advanced industrialized countries. The critical principles involve fund교 mental understanding of diverse industrial processes, adherence to the easiest techniques of a hierarchy for reducing wastes, and utilization of an underlying thought process to achieve pollution prevention successes that are both technically feasible and cost-effective. Chemical engineering has played a major and unique role in this environmental field. Improving the sustainability of cleaner production will rest on including this subject in the curriculum of university engineering. 1. INTRODUCTION began in U.S. industry and policy during the late 1970's. While examples of improved efficiency and No single dimension of environmental solutions has hence less waste had existed since the start of the captured the imagination of engineers, scientists, policy Industrial Revolution, the distinct explosion of successes -makers, and the public like pollution prevention. In the in pollution prevention did not occur until the 1980's. space of 10 years (1980-1990), the philosophical shift Fig. 1 is an approximate time line of this period [1,2]. and the record of accomplishment have made cleaner The early creation at the 3M Corporation of money production a fundamental means for environmental saving innovations that reduced chemical losses to air, management. This decade began with pollution prevent water, or land was widely publicized [3]. However, ion origins in 1976-1979 when the 3M Corporation propagation into other large corporations was almost initiated the 3P program and North Carolina adopted non-existent. The efforts through university research, waste minimization as a state-wide priority for managi state programs (beginning in North Carolina) to ng emissions from industry. By 1990, virtually all of illustrate the benefits of pollution prevention, led to a the Fortune 1000 United States corporations had pollut steady presentation of principles extending over the ion prevention as the first emphasis in describing their early to mid-19800 In 1986-1988, the improved approach to the environment. The shift from 20-50 information regarding chemical losses to the years of conventional pollution control to a preventative environment as a part of the U.S. EPA Toxic Release approach was dramatic because of this reversal in Inventory (TRI) program precipitated action [4], priorities. A number of CEOs in large corporations challenged The adoption of pollution prevention as a clearly their companies, in a very public fashion, to reduce differentiated approach to environmental improvement these chemical losses. 청정기술 제 2권 제 1호 2 Cleaner Production : Basic Principles and Development -industrial ecology -sustainability Use of a particular terminology is usually linked to the forum in which the debate is occurring and hence 1976 3M esMUiM 3P Program these terms have subtle differences, but share the major emphasis on prevention. That is, all of these descriptors 1979 North Carolina Sets Waste Minimization as refer to the intuitive perspective that it is advantageous Top Priority for Hazardous Wastes - Hierardiy to manage chemical losses or wastes generated from 1981 Publication of Pollution Prevention Roadmap the top of a hierarchy for waste management, Fig. 2. 2. POLLUTION PREVENTION 1984 State Pollution Prevention Round Ta미 e first meets (4 states) PRINCIPLES 1986 The hierarchy for waste management has been 1987 Initiation of Corporate Pollution Prevention Programs-Polaroid, Dow, Dupont, Monsanto, etc. 1988 reconstructed numerous times by authors in the cleaner 1989 State P에 ution Preventioi Roundtable Readies 45 States production field, but still retains the same basic Proliferation of Ccxporate Cleaner Tedinology - Fortune 1000 에 1990 Federal P ution Prevention Act, 1990 fundamental principles. The first point in time and potentially the most thermodynamically or economically US AID Begins to Export Cleaner Technology Programs, EP3 1992 effective opportunity for reducing impact on the environment is to prevent or reuse wastes. These wastes are chemical losses from the vast diversity of Fig, 1. General historical sequence for growth of industrial conversions that occur between chemicals in cleaner technology in the U.S. the natural state found around the worid and the state of those chemicals in the products or services which As the autocatalytic effect spread to other companies reflect the gross domestic product of the all countries. and whole industry associations or sectors, the policy Preventing chemical and material losses reduces waste of priority for pollution prevention took shape in the and the magnitude of the remainder of the waste U.S. The outcome has been impress- ive, not management hierarchy, Fig. 2. necessarily uniform, by achieving a philosophical shift However, wastes can never be reduced to zero in to cleaner manufacturing. These events were even more conjunction with the industrial conversions described impressive when it is recognized that virtually all of the individual changes to manufacturing have been above. Thus, the next level of the waste management cost-effective (a generally held rule of a two year hierarchy is aimed at converting to less- or non- payback on capital investment). hazardous constituents, Fig. 2. This is pollution control Use of the term pollution prevention is common in and was the predominant means of environmental the United States, but is actually one of many protection prior to the shift to cleaner technologies. It synonyms. These include may in fact still be the predominant technologies for -waste minimization environmental protection, but is no longer viewed as -cleaner production preferable. Unfortunately these treatment techniques, as -waste reduction with other conversions in chemical states, also produce -clean technology wastes, or residues, Fig. 2. LandHlls and underground -source reduction injection are the dominant approaches for residue -environmentally benign synthesis management in the United States. The increased costs -environmentally-conscious manufacturing of pollution control and residue management levels of CLEAN TECHNOLOGY Vol 2 No 1 Michael Overcash 3 this hierarchy can stimulate pollution prevention. total quality management (TQM), continuous process Conceptual development of the hierarchy and the need improvement (CPI), and safety. However, with a formal to focus on the preventative and reuse elements was set of procedures, the transferability of pollution not sufficient to achieve progress and general prevention occurred across all types of industry and understanding of the pollution prevention field. countries. CONVERSION OF HAZARDOUS TO LESS OR NON-HAZARDOUS AIR AND AQUATIC SYSTEMS CHEMICAL BENEHCIAL INCINERATION THERMAL PHYSICAU & USEAND TREATMENT BIOLjOGICAL •fflEATMEMT 1HEATMENT ON LAND PERPETUAL STORAGE ARID REGION UNDERGROUND WASTE SURFACE SALT LANDHLLS UNSATURATED INJECTION MLES IMPOUNDMENTS FORMATION ZONES Fig. 2. Overview of pollution prevention and industrial manufacturing (Cleaner production) Hierarchy concept (Overcash and Miller 1981) A methodology for achieving cleaner technology was The driving forces for adoption of cleaner technology needed. This roadmap, Fig. 3 [5], was first developed also include major economic factors. These are related in 1981 from studies of the small literature of pollution to both the rapidly increasing cost of compliance with prevention successes. In essence, the roadmap identified the regulations for managing wastes that are generated the generic concepts in cleaner production. by industry and the economics of significant process Following the logic or thought process in Fig. 3 has improvement. Fig. 4 illustrates the national annual repeatedly lead firms to discover pollution prevention expenditures by U.S. industry to comply with the « alternatives that are technically and economically environmental laws governing air, water, and land [6]. feasible. In retrospect, this roadmap is very similar to In 1987, when pollution prevention was beginning to the solutions in manufacturing of other goals such as grow rapidly, these costs were about $75 billion per 청정기술 제 2권 제 1호 4 Cleaner Production : Basic Principles and Development year. In 1990, the amendments to the Clean Air Act Current estimates are in the range of 4%-6% of total alone added an estimated $32 billion per year. sales are spent on environmental compliance. The recognizecl need to nMnimizm waste Successfully implemented waste minimization projects Fig. 3. Roadmap for implementing cleaner production These are large costs and the trend was for Pollution prevention is aimed at avoiding these costs escalatin응 expenditures as successive waves of and the escalatin응 trends through future decades. environmental law amendments were developed. Within However, the experience with the cost benefits of companies, costs of 20% of the total manufacturing pollution prevention has shown that regulatory cost expenditures for environmental compliance occurred. avoidance is often exceeded substantially by the cost CLEAN TECHNOLOGY V이 2 No 1 Michael Overcash 5 improvement through greater process efficiency. From ten randomly selected pollution prevention