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ABSTRACT In recent years, with the increase of industrial production, assessment of the physical consequences of human and production activities became crucial in terms of efficient and environment friendly production. At this point, certain methods such as Energy Material Flow Analyses (EMFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which contribute to optimization of energy and material consumption by sophisticated software tools, came to prominence. In this study, a web based EMFA software tool named EPESUS (Eco-Industrial Park Environmental Support System) is introduced by emphasizing its features and underlying methodological approaches. EPESUS, in contrast to other tools, presents unique features such as: (1) web based online material flow analysis (2) regional, country, eco industrial park or facility wide multi-dimensional EMFA analyzes for different types of users and (3) web based impact assessment. Since EPESUS presents an easy to use user interface and able to serve to different levels of organizations in various hierarchical levels it expands new horizons in EIP, region and country wide EMFA analysis that has never been achieved before. Thus, it is foreseen that EPESUS will prevent unfair competition in the industry and will encourage the industrialists to be more innovative to increase production efficiency and reduce costs so as to improve sustainable environmental management. KEYWORDS
Material flow analysis, Web based MFA, Eco-industrial park, Industrial ecology
1. INTRODUCTION
All products and services have environmental impacts, from the supply of the required raw materials and energy, to their production, distribution, use and disposal. The traditional industrial production has led to serious environmental problems both on regional and global level. These problems mainly include energy consumption, resource use, soil, air and water pollution resulting in degradation of environmental values. With the increase of industrial production, assessment of the physical consequences of human and production activities became crucial for efficient and environment friendly production. As it is indicated by Wang in order to reach sustainable industrial management, industrial development patterns should be improved considering the environmental impacts (Wang, 2012). According to (Yntem et al, 2011) one producers waste has the potential to be the food for another living organism, forming a kind of symbiosis. In this context, as an integrated system method, industrial ecology is one of the developed approaches in order to improve the environmental performance of the industrial production patterns. It includes the study of interaction between the industrial system and the ecological system through physical, chemical and biological behaviors (Garner & Keoleian, 1995). This would allow companies to perform a more co-operative manner to achieve their environmental goals and also this situation can lead to more economic, environmentally efficient and technologically developed industrial systems (Yntem et al., 2011). At this point, Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) are highlighted since they constitute the application practices of the industrial ecology principles. The main objective of EIPs shall be to achieve
sustainable production patterns for the material and energy flows of the defined processes, which shall lead to efficient production as well. For this reason, certain methodologies are developed and applied worldwide for successive application of the EIPs. Some of them are EMFA and LCA that have been developed to analyze, model and assess environmental impacts of industrial processes. By definition, EMFA involves a whole family of tools to optimize the consumption of energy, raw material, water and the discharge of effluents by pursuing systematically internal flows of energy and mass in production processes (Torres T.M. et al., 2008). On the other hand, LCA is a method for evaluating the environmental effects of a service, process or product holistically, over its entire life cycle (cradle to gate, gate to gate and cradle to grave) from raw materials extraction through consumer use (Yntem et al., 2011). Currently, a number of commercial software products take part in EMFA and LCA literature such as Umberto (Umberto Software, 2012), Gabi (Gabi Software, 2012), SimaPro (SimaPro, 2012) and OpenLCA (OpenLCA, 2012). All of these tools are designed and implemented for LCA and EMFA analysis by enabling users to model required process schemas via visualizing them in illustrative diagrams and optimizing costs, resource use and environmental impact. Although the available computer programs and similar studies are equipped with eye-catching features like mass and energy balancing, cost calculation, flexible process specification, scenario based comparison, sensitivity analysis and optimization etc., they have three main difficulties: first, these software packages are designed for only facility-wide usage to model and analyze the studied system processes within its boundary which results lack of detection and construction of co-operative symbiotic relations (e.g. waste reuse) among other systems which could be other facilities in the EIP. Second, they are highly complex software products implemented as desktop applications (web-based architectures are not preferred due to sophisticated UI requirements, complication of sufficient web capabilities in the previous decades and some other difficulties) and third, impact assessment features are limited to only facility wide usage and web based impact assessment on overall EIP, region or country is not available due to the reasons stated at first item. Furthermore, to suggest better ways of production, detecting similar problematic parts in processes of facilities (e.g. high energy or material consumption or waste production) located in the same EIP is completely out of scope in the tools listed above. To cope with these problems, Eco Industrial Park Environmental Support System called EPESUS which is subjected to this study is designed and implemented. In the following sections EPESUS is introduced by emphasizing its web oriented features and contributions. However, due to page limitations, web features are emphasized mainly.
Figure 1. Process, unit process and flow elements in EPESUS EMFA methodology
This discrimination further leads system to classify inputs and outputs in different analyzes. In principle, every unit process is connected to other unit processes. These connections can be done manually or automatically. However in EPD, an automatic flow connection system is developed for sake of simplicity. By this way, unit processes are organized on a graph and constitute a process by being calculated their scale factors. In EPESUS process methodology, scale factor (unit process multiplication factor) of a unit process is calculated by achieving two consecutive steps. First, although all unit processes forms a graph schema, it is converted to a tree and by considering loop conditions and process output unit process is located to root of tree. Secondly, all unit processes are navigated by backtracking approach and considering main product flow amounts. As a result, from root to leaf, all unit processes are balanced in mass or energy requirements.
By the help of these enhancements, it is aimed to establish efficient waste transfer or re-use connections between facilities on same EIP. Moreover, an EIP administrator can compare common unit processes flow amounts in the EIP and make suggestions to facilities which need essential upgrades in production technology. On the other hand, system administrators have the ability to set every parameter of system. Region, EIP, enterprise, sector, library and general forum management is left to the control of system administrators. Further, country, region wide detailed reports are generated. By this way, decision makers can view and investigate material or energy flows on different categories or various perspectives and hierarchies. Likewise, pivot grid control enables to view and analyze aggregated data similar to OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cubes.
analyses, EPESUS is designed and implemented. In terms of industrial environmental aspects, EPESUS project achieve to be a guideline for the industrialists and the EIP managers in order to increase the environmental performance of the industrialists and the EIPs. Coordination in establishment of co-operative relations (i.e. waste or by-product reuse among facilities) constitutes the main idea of EPESUS project. As a further research, adapting data mining and optimization methods to EPESUS is aimed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Eco-Industrial Park Environmental Support System (ECO/08/239001/S12.539401) is an eco-innovation project which is funded under the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (EIP) component of Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP). The project is currently preceded by the contribution of the project partners under the coordination of Ekodenge Ltd.
REFERENCES
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