Industrial Symbiosis and Networks Flashcards
What are the three variants of natural symbiosis?
- Mutualism: Both parts take advantage
- Commensalism: One part takes advantage, the other part is indifferent
- Parasitism: One part takes advantage, the other part is damaged
What is Industrial symbiosis? Short definition
Separate industries collaborate to exchange materials, energy, water and by products
- A waste from another industry can be a resource/raw material for production in another industry
What are the 3 pillars that makes industrial Symbiosis?
- Separate entities: Companies don’t make the same products nor are in the same market, but can still collaborate and exchange resources
- Collective approach to competitive advantage: Companies need to work together to gain competitive edge
- Involving physical exchanges: Using waste from process A as raw material in process B reduces the need for new sources –> lowered environmental impact
What is perfect symbiosis?
The by-product from the first process can be used directly in process 2
- No need for treatment or additional resources
- Waste heating and excess heating
What is imperfect symbiosis?
Symbiosis where a treatment process is needed to reuse the waste as an input in another process
- There can also be a need for additional resources
OBS!!! The transportation of the waste is not classified as a treatment
There are 4 different models of industrial symbiosis? What are these?
- Internal Use and Input replacement: waste replace an input within the same company
- McDonalds: Uses frying oil as biofuel - Internal use and product development: Waste creates new products used within the same company
- Guitang makes alcohol and paper from sugar production waste - External use and Input replacement: Waste replaces an input for another company
- Gyproc use fly ash in cement production - External use and product development: Waste becomes a new product for another company
- Kazmok makes bags from old conveyor belts
Why industrial symbiosis? What are the environmental benefits?
- Less waste discharged
- Less raw materials used in production processes
- Less GHG
How can the environmental benefits of industrial symbiosis be assessed in terms of flow?
- Material flow analysis (MFA): tracks the movement of materials through a system to asses resource use and waste
- Substance Flow analysis (SFA): Focuses on flow of specific substances to understand their impact and management needs
MFA is broader while SFA focuses on specific substances
- Enterpise Input-Output analysis (IOA): Maps how outputs from one industry becomes inputs for others, helping to analyze the flow of goods and services throughout an economy
What is emergy?
The total available amount of energy that is consumed to produce a product
- E.g. The energy used to grow a tree
What is exergy?
The quality of the energy: How much work it can actually do
- E.g. low exergy: district heating
- E.g. high exergy: Steam at 300 degrees driving turbines
What are the economical benefits of industrial symbiosis?
- Lower waste disposal
- Lower input purchasing costs
- Additional revenue: since you cab sell product for a higher price if they are “green”
- Also, producer can give waste for free which incurs a bigger profit
What are the formula for the economic benefits of Industrial symbiosis from a holistic perspective?
BE =[ (dc + pc) - (rc+tc) ] * e
Where,
dc= Waste disposal cost you save from selling the waste to other company
pc= Input purchase cost you save from buying wastes instead of virgin materials
rc= waste treatment additional cost
tc= waste transportation additional cost
e= amount of waste exchanged
What defines an industrial symbiosis network?
Network of at least 3 companies exchanging at least 2 wastes (3-2 heuristic)
The industrial symbiosis network can be formed in 2 different ways, explain and give examples
1). Top down approach.
Centralization of control: A central organization/company is responsible for monitoring the industrial symbiosis:
- Designing the relationships,
- managing operations and infrastructure
- Selecting new companies that can be involved
NOT THAT DEMOCRATIC
2). Bottom Up approach.
Decentralization of control: networks arise spontaneously and companies are free to enter or exit (free design of relationships)
- E.g. early stages of the Kalundborg symbiosis, that began as spontaneous collaboration among companies
How does a self-organized ISN arise?
- Sprouting: companies starts to build relationships, things are starting to build up
- Uncovering: The network is created
- Embeddedness: Companies are aware of that the network exists and understand how being apart of it is useful for them
- Starts promote and advertise the network, attracting other companies to enter the network