Optimization methods applied to the design of eco-industrial parks: a literature review

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.032

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 87, 15 January 2015, Pages 303-317

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.032 Get rights and content

Abstract

With the growing environmental concern, there is evidence that increasing symbiotic relationship between plants in the same industrial area, highly contributes to a more sustainable development of industrial activities. The concept of industrial ecology extended to the terms of eco-industrial park (or ecopark) or industrial symbioses is the topic of extensive research since the five last years. More particularly, even if a lot of ecopark examples and realizations already exist throughout the world, a lot of ecopark proposals are in progress but not achieved. Recently, this vision leads the research community to focus on works proposing methods to optimize the exchanges of an ecopark prior to its design and construction. We find it especially interesting for the scientific community to propose a detailed paper review focused on optimization works devoted to the design of eco industrial parks.

This paper is based on a comprehensive literature search in Web of Science database for publications that listed ‘industrial symbiosis’ (or ‘eco industrial park’, or ‘inter plant integration’) and ‘optimization’. This study is segmented into different sections with first, a description of the different concepts evoked in the literature. Then, the several types of networking in an eco-industrial park are detailed in association with the optimization methods employed to solve each problem. The following sections reviews the different objective functions that are formulated to optimally design an eco-industrial park. The last part of the paper is devoted to a critical analysis of the state of the art by proposing several routes to improve the methodologies found in the literature. Another aim of this paper review consists in finding the gaps existing in previous studies. These major gaps are found to be: the lack of multiobjective optimization studies, the absence of social/societal objectives formulation also needs to be addressed and the lack of works taking into account flexibility of ecoparks in an operational point of view.

Section snippets

Introduction and concepts

Nowadays, it is commonly admitted in the literature that several factors lead to an increasing depletion of natural resources (UNEP, 2000, UNESCO, 2009). One can cite for instance the rising of both worldwide population size (Nielsen, 2005) and urbanization. Facing this disturbing observation, a lot of research projects are now devoted to the global environmental preservation focused on industrial development based on the concept of “sustainable development” (Brundtland et al., 1987). To

Methods and scope

The design of eco-industrial parks is a part of these recent initiatives and, alongside of several years of qualitative studies, a lot of quantitative approaches are involved during the last years. Inherently, an eco-industrial park needs to operate optimally or near its optimal conditions regarding several antagonist objectives. Despite a comprehensive review about the successful development of EIP's written by Tudor et al. (2007), there is a lack of data especially devoted to optimization in

Exchange of water, energy and/or materials

Exchanges of materials, water and/or energy through a sharing network between companies of an EIP are the main way to design an optimal EIP. The research studies focus most of the time on the optimal design of an EIP network while taking into account separately water, energy and material.

Main objectives

Regarding the analysis previously done, an EIP can be viewed and optimized from different ways. One can consider the optimization of energy linkages and reuse, the water and wastewater network or the exchanges of materials (raw material, by-products or wastes). The final aim is to optimize all these components simultaneously in order to obtain an EIP as ecological as possible. Another important issue in the field of optimization lies on the characterization of the objective function(s). Indeed,

Analyses and perspectives

As specified by Chertow (2004), “an eco-industrial park may include many ecologically desirable goals, including mechanisms to reduce overall environmental impact, conserve materials and energy, and foster cooperative approaches to resource efficiency and environmental management”. This definition directly refers to the concept of a circular economy within an industrial area, where a goal of zero waste needs to be reached. Indeed, by minimizing environmental impacts, symbiotic relations have to