An integrated fuzzy mathematical programming framework for efficient water use in industrial ecosystems

• Main Author: Aviso, Khatleen B.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2010
• Subjects: Industrial ecology; Industrial Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/1486
• Institution: De La Salle University

In industrial ecology, the concept of industrial symbiosis promotes the establishment of waste exchange or resource conservation networks between several industrial plants to enhance sustainability. The establishment of these networks is encouraged by geographical proximity and the exchange of common industrial utilities such as water. The decision of the participants to join the network is further affected not only by technical soundness and achieving over-all economic and environmental gains, but also by the satisfaction of their individual objectives. However, there is a significant gap in the research on systematic design methods which include the individual goals of the network participants and model the industrial ecosystem in the presence of multiple decision-makers. A novel fuzzy mathematical programming framework for efficient water use is thus developed and presented in this work to integrate how the satisfaction of individual participant goals yields an optimal “satisficing” design of the entire network. The framework is used for developing multi-objective optimization models whose capabilities are demonstrated in application to scenarios involving industrial plants which are co-located in an eco-industrial park (EIP) and those which are vertically linked via the product supply chain. The framework is also able to address other inherent concerns in the IS design problem, such as the hierarchical structure of optimization with upper-level (e.g. government or EIP authority) and lower-level (park tenants) decision-makers, incomplete information exchange between IS participants, topological constraints to limit network complexity, and local or regional environmental limits such as resource availability and water footprint targets; these issues have not been addressed comprehensively in previous studies. The novel approach developed in this work results in an integrated water conservation strategy which encourages IS participation by simultaneously satisfying the identified goals of the network participants or decision-maker