In recent years, many chemical companies have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a core business value. With focus on early phases of batch process design, we present a novel design framework that comprises four stages of process modeling and multiobjective evaluation considering monetary and non-monetary aspects. Each stage is characterized by the available information, e.g. reaction route, yield, reaction time, separation scheme and scheduling, as a basis for process modeling and assessment. Appropriate modeling approaches, and evaluation indicators for economy, life-cycle environmental impacts, EHS hazard and technical aspects are selected for each defined stage. The proposed framework is demonstrated on the design of a 4-(2-methoxyethyl)-phenol process: considering seven synthesis routes, the framework is mimicked step-by-step, to select the route with the best multiobjective performances and to produce an optimized process flowsheet. As a validation of the framework, evaluation profile of several routes over all stages are compared, and crucial points are identified that should be estimated considerably well in early stages of the framework. Keywords

Early development phase; design framework; environment, health and safety (EHS); life-cycle assessment (LCA); batch process; 4-(2-methoxyethyl)-phenol.