Methodology for Applying Industrial Eco-Systemic
Approach To Local Level
Lucian Constantin*),Maria Teodorescu*), Mihai Stefanescu*),
The primary purpose of the Project comes from the remark that Nature has always found the best solutions for lasting, thriving progress, doing this by creating symbiotic and synergetic connections among all is components. In this way, the paper presents the application of industrial symbiosis (IS) principles to local level, where such symbiotic connections may be easily identified and generated. The eco-systemic approach allows for symbiotic development with a minimum impact upon the environment, by conserving and developing its natural, human, leisure, cultural and industrial potential. As industrial ecology, in general, and symbiosis, in particular, involves cooperation, partnerships, synergies, the paper details the mainframe of a tight collaboration strategy for all partners involved. The principles of industrial ecology require the involvement of all the interested parties in a win-win approach based on the three pillars of sustainable development: economic development, environmental protection, social progress. Thegeneral objective of the project is the demonstration of industrial symbiosis potential for sustainable development of the Romanian socio-economic system, starting bottom-up, from a local level. The specific objectives of the project include: Reduction of natural resource consumption (raw materials, energy, utilities) at all interested partners through implementation of innovative methods and instruments; Significant reduction of the environmental impact through evidence-based development policies at enterprise level; Improving the public image and perception of the participants involved in the eco-industrial approach; Identification of new lucrative areas, thus creating conditions for new job availability in the region; Awareness raising and training of interested partners and local communities on industrial symbiosis; Identification of best practices and dissemination at national level for further implementation of industrial symbiosis concepts.The approach includes workshops and communication networks in which potential partners exchange, in good trust, information about all kind of resources: material (waste is considered a valuable resource), human (experts), information (expertise, know-how, training capacity), infrastructure (extra productive capacities, transporting, logistics). Bilateral contacts based upon identified resources start to take shape and implementation of synergies created follows.A system of indicators enables selection of those synergies that whilst being easier to implement, have larger environmental / social impact at local level.Dissemination actions, intensively using the IT capabilities constitute the essential step toward the replication of the approach at regional and finally at national level.The paper is presenting results and impact of the initial stage of the Project.
Keywords: industrial ecosystem, synergies, symbiosis
Introduction
Industrial symbiosis is representing a subset of industrial ecology, focussed on (but not limited to) material and energy exchange. It involves sharing of: energy and utilities flows; by-product resources; information; services; equipments; expertise; specialistsamong several industrial actors in order to add value, reduce costs and improve environmental protection.
Figure1 Optimisation at economic level – industrial symbiosis
Brief description of the proposed methodology
The methodology proposed by the Project is seeking to contribute to a radical change of economic units thinking, forcing them to look beyond traditional borders, with courage and responsibility, to create a partnership based sustainable economy, in harmony with the environment.Due to the fact that ecology, generally, and symbiosis, particularly, is involving cooperation, partnerships, synergies, the Project methodology is based on a collaboration strategy. The ecology and industrial symbiosis principles are based on the philosophy that waste, by-products secondary energies, that can’t be used by one economic unit are considered valuable raw materials, materials and energy resources for an adjacent one. The effect consists in a dramatic decrease of raw material resources and environmental impact for all the participants to such a Project. It must be underlined that the relationships between partners are commercial, in essence, fact that leads to growing profits for all participants.Elements of such approach are already present in the cement industry (use of combustion waste), metallurgical industry (scrap iron recycling), and pulp and paper industry (more than half of produced paper is based on paper waste). Such examples are incorporating little technical intelligence and are illustrating partially the principles of industrial symbiosis, in which various units are inter-connected, and are supporting each other. The adaptive component of the symbiosis is also missing. This component will allow adjusting of technologies in such a way that by-products and residual flows will be conditioned in order to better serve the user needs (which is taking them as raw materials). According to Project’s strategy, the industrial ecology processes and building of local industrial symbiosis are asking for a number of key conditions:
-Companies must be compatible. The symbiosis is working only for an appropriate industrial composition, profile. Diversity is a must, in order to identify utile and valuable flows for other users, such as economic units, local communities, agriculture, environment itself (it is the case of waste transformed into compost and used as fertiliser or as additive for soil and irrigation treated water), within the vast number of economic unit’s flows.
-Symbiotic area must be geographically limited. The distance between source and user should not add major costs related to material’s conditioning, packaging and transport. This is highly important in the case of energy flows that are decreasing in quality on long distances.
-Maximum availability for cooperation among all interested partners. The Project can create symbiosis at local level only if transparency, sincere communication, availability to team working is present between interested partners. A high number of partners in symbiotic system are leading to more opportunities for reduction of resource consumption, waste, hazard. But the communication, the informational capillarity between too many partners became more difficult. The Project should found the optimum strategy, the optimum dimension.
-Interested partners must share the contingent costs and, in any case, the profit. Improvement of financial, economic, criteria at all interested partners is a must for the Project’s success.
Implementation of industrial symbiosis principles implies two main components, which will be developed in the frame of the Project:
-Scientific and technological component. It should be underlined that technical skills of participants and project’s specialists, in their own activity domain are not enough. The specialists must have extensive knowledge in adjacent domains. If the social and economic system is a network of centres (economic units, communities, etc.) and connection arches (relationships between centres), the industrial symbiosis is asking for transformation of specialisation on centres (within the specific activity domain of one economic unit) to specialisation on connections (detailed knowledge on processes that are taking place in various centres and how they can affect the performance of the own centre).
-Strategic, managerial component. The Project will generate a number of specialists, both from project’s partners and other interested partners from focal area, with a detailed vision on more domains. This nucleus of specialists will become a starting point for a further institutional development
The Project seeks to put into practice the major change recorded in the sustainable economic development approach. An economic system comprises centres (economic units) and connections (relationships / links between economic units). Nowadays, emphasise is changing from centres to connections. In this way, the focal point is no longer the economic unit and its performances, but the partnership (a relationship involves at least 2 centres - the partnership is assured by highly effective connections, following the model of living organism’s symbiosis). By analogy, the energy flows, symbiotic transferred, are assuring the reduction of energy need and solid fuels, minimising the emission of gases with green-house effect, global warming, and depreciation of non-regenerable resources. All these consequences are directly transformed into profit and improvement of Project’s focal points economic performances. The project will transfer the industrial ecology know-how, which will allow autonomous operation of focal area and the eventual extension of industrial symbiosis.
Case study – Adding value to wooden waste
The ECOREG Project is financed by the EU in the framework of the Life+ Programme and aims at implementing the principles of Industrial Symbiosis in focal zone – the SuceavaCounty (Romania). The present Case Study covers a synergy that evolved in a business partnership, after the 1st Workshop “Benefits Through Synergies”, held on May 20, 2009 (ECOREG, 2009).
Sawdust and wooden debris produced by SC VECOVAS SRL are collected by S.C. RITMIC SRL’s trucks, transported (65 km) and directed to the wooden debris processing unit of SC RITMIC SRL in Ilisesti. The debris are turned into briquettes and sold at a price of 400 RON/ton (95 Euros/ton) at the facility gate. When delivered to customers addresses, the price increases with the cost of transportation and manipulating. It is worth noting that the same briquettes are sold in supermarkets at a price of 850 RON/ton (200 Euros/ton).
Economic Benefits
SC RITMIC SRL obtains the raw material it needs to sustain its business at a bargain price (cost of transportation constitutes the major share in cost breakdown). SC VECOVAS SRL gets rid of important quantities of wooden debris that occupies production space, leaving it for other purposes. In Romania the legislation is still loosely enforced in such cases but the solution described here will help small sawmills survive, once this enforcement will become effective. Currently, the Environmental Protection Agency Suceava is implementing a tougher policy, issueing permits to small sawmills only if they can demonstrate that the wooden waste is managed environmentally friendly. The solution presented here prevent SC VECOVAS from paying fees for non-compliance.
Environmental Benefits
Enviro impact of sawdust. Essentially, wooden debris and sawdust are organic matter that, in principle, should not pollute the environment. Indeed, sawdust is used in many instances to improve soil texture, along with nitrogen containing fertilizers, manure, lime, etc. But when left on soil, in large quantities, in the vicinity of water courses, this kind of waste is a heavy polluter. In Canada, a vast operation of assessing the environmental impact of sawmills has been found too costly for sawmills owners (5000-80000 Can$) so many small-operation sawmills have chosen to close rather than pay the Ontario Ministry of the Environment’s new fees for assessment and saw dust disposal (Canadian Geographic, 2009). Disposed of on soil, saw dust modifies drastically the soil quality and composition, by changing the Carbon-Nitrogen ration in soil. Bacteria that consume carbon from saw dust consumes also the Nitrogen (essential to plant metabolism) in soil, leaving less Nitrogen for plants. The impact upon water is similar, bacteria that consumes carbon in celluloses from sawdust, exhaust the oxygen in the water, suffocating fishes and other organisms. Leachate from sawmills is produced by rainfalls, snowfalls or by water used by employees to reduce dust taken by the wind. Leachate gets easily in and pollutes the underground or nearby river / lake waters taking with it dissolved materials, including chemicals used to treat the wood. In addition, the process leaves the toxic lignin free in the water (lignin is a complex chemical compound, an integral part of the cell walls of plants that protect trees from predators while they are alive, but can leach into water and poison wildlife).
Virgin resources saved. As wood is the main fuel for households in the Suceava area (together with coal of rather low quality - lignite), the main benefit of using sawdust briquettes is sparing virgin resources (forests). The 1600 tons of sawdust collected and processed per year come from renewable resources and means 1600 tons less virgin wood needed for domestic uses, i.e. 9.2 ha virgin forest saved (at a rate of 218 m3 tree volume per hectare, cf. Romanian Forests, 2009).
Fossil fuels saved. For a year operation, at a rate of 1600 tons sawdust processed, the synergy leads to economies of: 536 tons methane (ca. 750000 m3 STP); 1184 tons coal; 688 tons fuel oil or 984 tons ethanol (seen as a future substitute for fossil gasoline)
Greenhouse gases (CO2). The advantage of the wooden briquettes is that they are, practically, carbon neutral (Illsey et al, 2007). The contained carbon is benign (it is not coming from fossil sources but from the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, processed by trees during their life time). So, the carbon dioxide emitted by wood combustion does not add to the overall greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere. Indeed, one of the most important EU energy projects is to turn wood in ethanol, considering wood as a benign source of carbon dioxide and adding the possibility of using the existing piping network and gas stations for delivering liquid ethanol, instead of fossil gasoline or solid wood. Every 1 kg of wooden briquettes is equivalent to and replaces the dioxide carbon of fossil origin produced by 0.3367 kg methane (0.47 m3 STP); 0.7405 kg coal (lignite); 0.43 kg fuel oil.
Other pollutants.
As mentioned, coal is, along with wood, the main fuel use in households across the focus area. Coal contains large quantities of sulfur and traces of heavy metals (in ash).
Gases that generate acid rains (SOx):
-1600 tons of sawdust processed and burnt produces only 640 kg SOx
-The equivalent quantity of 1184 tons of coal with approx. 1.5 % Sulfur (Clean Coal, 2009) produces 35000 kg SOx.
Even if this SOx is captured as dry gypsum – CaSO4, this means approx. 77000 kg CaSO4 that adds to the solid waste produced. The advantage of burning briquettes is obvious.
Heavy metals:
-ash from burning briquettes does not contain heavy metals.
-1184 tons of lignite (low quality coal) with up to 45% ash, dry basis (Clean coal, 2009) leads to 500-530 tons of ash to be sent to damping areas. These ashes contain important quantities of heavy metals (Vanadium, Chromium, Nickel, Cadmium, Arsenic, Lead, etc.) that pollute the environment when deposited in large quantities. Using briquettes instead of coal totally reduces these hazards.
-Chlorides, Mercury, NOx are also heavy pollutants generated by burning coal and inexistent during briquettes burning.
Life Cycle Considerations. Raw material for the briquettes comes from a insidious waste that currently pollutes the forests’ outskirts and water banks and courses. The processing technology is environmentally friendly, uses biomass (wooden chips) as energy source and the only waste produced is the (benign) carbon dioxide that comes from the biomass burnt.
Once entering the market, briquettes are deposited and burnt. During their life time they do not produce any environmental hazard and their combustion produce benign carbon dioxide and small quantities of ash that can be used as fertilizer.
Waste diverted from landfill. As already shown, if the sawdust is not taken from its source and processed, it will be left on soil, near water courses, and not in controlled damping areas. So the synergy diverts some 1600 tons of waste from landfill.
Conclusions
The first results obtained within the ECOREG project are certifying that industrial symbiosis is serving to the improvement of financial, economic, technical, environmental performances of the partners, contributing to new jobs availability, business opportunities, within the focal area. In contrast with the Projects that are generating earnings to one specific economic unit, focused on one specific fabrication profile, etc., the present Project is directed to partnerships. The beneficiaries are no longer identifiable, singularised. They will be all those that are available to symbiotic partnership’s development on a limited geographic area. The advantage is of such symbiosis is that can participate and obtain earnings also economic units with a small number of employees, SMEs, which are ready to participate in a specific function of the symbiosis, and also organisations from outside of economic domain (local communities). Both, via use of IT technologies and direct actions, the Project’s partners will try to attract other potential partners, especially private investors ready to take over one or more of the symbiosis’ functions of project network, within focal area (more information to be found on
Acknowledgements
LIFE + Programme - ECOREG Project
References
ECOREG (2009), Retrieved on Aug 15, 2009
Canadian Geographic (2009), Retrieved on Aug 20, 2009.
Clean Coal (2009), , retrieved on July 2, 2009.
Romanian Forests (2009), , retrieved Aug 12, 2009.