Integration along the Lifecycle of Calcium Fluoride in the Fluorine Industry Abstract The recovery of fluoride from industrial wastewaters as a product to be reused and its integration along the lifecycle is presented as priority objective of the fluorine industry in order to contribute to the development of sustainable processes. In this work, the computer aided integration of processes is applied to the dry fluorspar process of the Aluminum Trifluoride manufacture from HF, with a fluoride recovery/recycling process based on a fluidized bed crystallization step leading to a significant saving of raw material CaF 2 . A 5% saving of CaF 2 was obtained with a fluoride recovery yield in the crystallization system of 65% as calcium fluoride referred to the total fluoride losses. Keywords: calcium fluoride, computer aided integration, fluidized crystallization 1. Introduction The Computer Aided Process Engineering is currently applied in industry in different phases of the lifecycle of a process and product, focused on the integration of existing sotware tools and support systems that are currently used for an effective support of the design lifecycle in Chemical Engineering (Bayer et al., 2000; Mayer and Schoenmakers, 1998). Sustainable development requires not only to assess multi-dimensional items such as environmental impacts, process safety, product safety, and so son, required from human society, environment, and markets, but also to feedback asssesment results to product and process design/development, with relevance on product lifecycle studies (Naka et al., 2000). A review of lifecycle assessment applications was reported by Azapagic (1999) covering applications in (i) strategic planning or environmental strategy development, (ii) product and process optimization, design and innovation, (iii) identification of environmental improvements opportunities, (iv) environmental reporting and marketing, (v) creating a framework for environmental audits. The application of lifecycle assessment in process selection, design and optimization was remarked as a tool for identifying clean technologies. The importance of lifecycle assessment for process selection has also been recognised by the EU Directive on IPPC (Council Directive 91/61/EC, 1996) which requires that the Best Available Technique must be chosen by considering the environment as a whole, including indirect releases, consumption of raw materials and waste disposal. Recent progress has promising implications on the use of intelligent systems for product lifecycle managements applications in the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and discrete parts manufacturing industries for better product quality, inherently safer design, operator training, abnormal events management and optimal process operations (Venkatasubramanian, 2005; Palaniappan et al. 2002). The application of inherent and 9th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering W. Marquardt, C. Pantelides (Editors) © 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V. 16th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering 811 Aurora Garea, Rubén Aldaco, Ignacio Fernández, and Angel Irabien Departamento de Ingeniería Química y Química Inorgánica, ETSII y T, Universidad de Cantabria, Avda. Los Castros, s/n, Santander 39005, Spain