Open Access

Environmentally-friendly implementation of new technologies and eco-innovative solutions often faces additional secondary ecological problems. On the other hand, existing biological systems show a lesser environmental impact as compared to the human-made products or technologies. The paper defines a research agenda for identification of underlying eco-inventive principles used in the natural systems created through evolution. Finally, the paper proposes a comprehensive method for capturing eco-innovation principles in biological systems in addition and complementary to the existing biomimetic methods and TRIZ methodology and illustrates it with an example.

Economic growth and ecological problems have pushed industries to switch to eco-friendly technologies. However, environmental impact is still often neglected since production efficiency remains the main concern. Patent analysis in the field of process engineering shows that, on the one hand, some eco-issues appear as secondary problems of the new technologies, and on the other hand, eco-friendly solutions often show lower efficiency or performance capability. The study categorizes typical environmental problems and eco-contradictions in the field of process engineering involving solids handling and identifies underlying inventive principles that have a higher value for environmental innovation. Finally, 42 eco-innovation methods adapting TRIZ are chronologically presented and discussed.

Process engineering (PE) focuses on the design, operation, control and optimization of chemical, physical and biological processes and has applications in many industries. Process intensification (PI) is the key development approach in the modern process engineering. The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) is today considered as the most comprehensive and systematically organized invention knowledge and creative thinking methodology. This paper analyses the opportunities of TRIZ application in PE and especially in combination with PI. In this context the paper outlines the major challenges for TRIZ application in PE, conceptualizes a possible TRIZ-based approach for process intensification and problem solving in PE, and defines the corresponding research agenda. It also presents the results of the original empirical innovation research in the field of solid handling in the ceramic industry, demonstrates a method for identification and prediction of contradictions and introduces the concept of the probability of contradiction occurrence. Additionally, it describes a technique of process mapping that is based on the function and multi-screen analysis of the processes. This technique is illustrated by a case study dealing with granulation process. The research work presented in this paper is a part of the European project “Intensified by Design® platform for the intensification of processes involving solids handling”.

The implementation of new technologies in production plants often causes negative side effects and drawbacks. In this context, the prediction of the secondary problems and risks can be used advantageously for selecting best solutions for intensification of the processes. The proposed method puts primary emphasis on systematic and fast anticipation of secondary problems using patent documents, and on extraction and prediction of possible engineering contradictions within novel technical systems. The approach comprises three ways to find secondary problems: (a) direct knowledge-based identification of secondary problems in new technologies or equipment; (b) identification of secondary problems of prototypes mentioned in patent citation trees; and (c) prediction of negative side effects using the correlation matrix for invention goals and secondary problems in a specific engineering domain.

As engineering graduates and specialists frequently lack the advanced skills and knowledge required to run eco-innovation systematically, the paper proposes a new teaching method and appropriate learning materials in the field of eco-innovation and evaluates the learning experience and outcomes. This programme is aimed at strengthening student’s skills and motivation to identify and creatively overcome secondary eco-contradictions in case if additional environmental problems appears as negative side effects of eco-friendly solutions. Based on a literature analysis and own investigations, authors propose to introduce a manageable number of eco-innovation tools into a standard one-semester design course in process engineering with particular focus on the identification of eco-problems in existing technologies, selection of the appropriate new process intensification technologies (knowledge-based engineering), and systematic ideation and problem solving (knowledge-based innovation and invention). The proposed educational approach equips students with the advanced knowledge, skills and competences in the field of eco-innovation. Analysis of the student’s work allows one to recommend simple-to-use tools for a fast application in process engineering, such as process mapping, database of eco-friendly process intensification technologies, and up to 20 strongest inventive operators for solving of environmental problems. For the majority of students in the survey, even the small workload has strengthened their self-confidence and skills in eco-innovation

The 40 Altshuller Inventive Principles with numerous sub-principles remain over decades the most frequently applied tool of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving TRIZ for systematic idea generation. However, their application often requires a concentrated, creative and abstract way of thinking that can be fairly challenging for the newcomers to TRIZ. This paper describes an approach to reduce the abstraction level of inventive sub-principles and presents the results of the idea generation experiment conducted with three groups of undergraduate and graduate students from different years of study in mechanical and process engineering. The students were asked to generate and to record their individual ideas for three design problems using a pre-defined set of classical and modified sub-principles within 10 minutes. The overall outcomes of the experiment support the assumption that the less abstract wording of the modified sub-principles leads to higher number of ideas. The distribution of ideas between the fields of MATCHEM-IBD (Mechanical, Acoustic, Thermal, Chemical, Electrical, Magnetic, Intermolecular, Biological and Data processing) differs significantly between groups using modified and abstract sub-principles.

Growing demands for cleaner production and higher eco-efficiency in process engineering require a comprehensive analysis of technical and environmental outcomes of customers and society. Moreover, unexpected additional technical or ecological drawbacks may appear as negative side effects of new environ-mentally friendly technologies. The paper conceptualizes a comprehensive ap-proach for analysis and ranking of engineering and ecological requirements in process engineering in order to anticipate secondary problems in eco-design and to avoid compromising the environmental or technological goals. For this purpose, the paper presents a method based on integration of the Quality Func-tion Deployment approach with the Importance-Satisfaction Analysis for the requirements ranking. The proposed method identifies and classifies compre-hensively the potential engineering and eco-engineering contradictions through analysis of correlations within requirements groups such as stakehold-er requirements (SRs) and technical requirements (TRs), and additionally through cross-relationship between SRs and TRs.

The increasing diffusion of rapidly developing AI technologies led to the idea of the experiment to combine TRIZ-based automated idea generation with the natural language processing tool ChatGPT, using the chatbot to interpret the automatically generated elementary solution principles. The article explores the opportunities and benefits of a novel AI-enhanced approach to teaching systematic innovation, analyses the learning experience, identifies the factors that affect students' innovation and problem-solving performance, and highlights the main difficulties students face, especially in interdisciplinary problems.

Sustainable chemical processes should be designed to combine the technological advantages and progress with lower safety risks and minimization of environmental impact such as, for example, reduction of raw materials, energy and water consumption, and avoidance of hazardous waste and pollution with toxic chemical agents. A number of novel eco-friendly chemical technologies have been developed in the recent decades with the help of the eco-innovations approaches and methods such as Life Cycle Analysis, Green Process Engineering, Process Intensification, Process Design for Sustainability, and others. An emerging approach to the sustainable process design in process engineering builds on the innovative solutions inspired from nature. However, the implementation of the eco-friendly technologies often faces secondary ecological problems. The study postulates that the eco-inventive principles identified in natural systems allow to avoid secondary eco-problems and proposes to apply these principles for sustainable design in chemical process engineering. The research work critically examines how this approach differs from the biomimetics, as it is commonly used for copying natural systems. The application of nature-inspired eco-design principles is illustrated with an example of a sustainable technology for extraction of nickel from pyrophyllite.