Abstract: Not only for environmental protection, but also for process technology in itself, it is an urgent task to integrate environmental impact minimization into chemical process synthesis. This paper is trying to summarize the developments of this area over the recent ten years in order to remind chemical engineers of what can be done now and what should be done in near future from an industrial viewpoint. After discussing some original concepts and hierarchies, three aspects of process synthesis i.e. reaction path synthesis, environmental impact assessment and process integration, are highlighted for environmental impact minimization. There is no mature tool in reaction path synthesis as yet; the advances in green chemistry will play a great role in connection with finding new reaction, new raw material, new solvents, and etc. There is still a long road to go for the development of environmental performance indicators and indices; and the next step is to incorporate some generally accepted indices into flowsheeting software. Some new trends in modeling and simulation techniques and numerical optimization can readily solve problems involving environmental issues in a more natural way. All in all, due to the multi-objectivity and complexity in environmental impact minimization, the combined methodology becomes the necessity, and a promising direction is how to combine reaction path synthesis,and flowsheet with environmental impact assessment system with multi-objective programming techniques.

摘要： 将环境影响最小化集成到化工过程综合中 ,不仅对于环境保护 ,而且对于过程技术本身都是目前紧迫的任务 .从过程系统工程的观点对环境影响最小化的化工过程综合进行了全面文献调研和综述 ,在简介环境影响最小化的一般原则以及过程综合变迁的基础上重点论述了过程综合中影响最为深远的 3个方面即反应路径综合、环境影响评价和过程集成技术 ,最后得出一般性的结论 ,以期作为化工系统工程发展的方向