Process assessment, integration and optimisation: The path towards cleaner production

This contribution starts from the broad perspective of the global material cycles, analysing the main resource and pollution issues world-wide from the viewpoint of the disturbances to these cycles caused by human activities. The issues are analysed in the light of the currently developing COVID-19 pandemic with the resulting behavioural and business pattern changes. It has been revealed in the analysis of previous reviews that there is a need for a more comprehensive analysis of the resource and environmental impact contributions by industrial and urban processes, as well as product supply chains. The review discusses the recent key developments in the areas of Process Integration and Optimisation, the assessment and reduction of process environmental impacts, waste management and integration, green technologies. That is accompanied by a review of the papers in the current Virtual Special Issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production which is dedicated to the extended articles developed on the basis of the papers presented at the 22nd Conference on Process Integration for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction. The follow-up analysis reveals significant advances in the efficiency and emission cleaning effects of key processes, as well as water/wastewater management and energy storage. The further analysis of the developments identifies several key areas for further research and development – including increases of the safety and robustness of supply networks for products and services, increase of the resources use efficiency of core production and resource conversion processes, as well as the emphasis on improved product and process design for minimising product wastage.