Toward an eco-innovative method based on a better use of resources: application to chemical process preliminary design

Chemical industries have the potential to become a driving force to introduce efficient production practices for reducing the negative impact on the environment. In order to meet these environmental challenges, innovation is a key factor in turning the concept of green growth into a reality through the development of eco-friendly technologies and sustainable production. Therefore, to accelerate and improve the design of eco-inventive solutions, new approaches must be created and adapted to integrate the constraints of eco-invention in the preliminary design. The purpose of this paper is to present the first elements of a computer aided eco-innovation system to support the engineers in preliminary design. This research paper proposes a method based on a synergy between the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and the Case Based Reasoning. However, the typical level of abstraction of the TRIZ tools is modified. Indeed, TRIZ only gives way or guidelines to explore in order to find an inventive solution, which are often too abstract and hard to traduce into an inventive concept. To reduce this level of abstraction, this work proposes to apply the physical, chemical, biological, geometrical effects or phenomenon as solutions as they are more concrete. This is done thanks to a resources oriented search in order to better exploit the resources encompassed in the system. A case study on a new production process in chemical engineering illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.