scheduling; waste management; design; material recovery; systems analysis; energy efficiency; sustainability assessment; planning
Haupt M., Vandebo C., Zeltner C., Hellweg S., Influence of input-scrap quality on the environmental impact of secondary steel production, in
Journal of Industrial Ecology, -.
Bolis Vasco, Capón-García Elisabet, Weder Oliver, Hungerbühler Konrad, New classification of chemical hazardous liquid waste for the estimation of its energy recovery potential based on existing measurements, in
Journal of Cleaner Production, 183, 1228-1540.
Bolis Vasco, Capón-García Elisabet, Hungerbühler Konrad, Optimal Design of Industrial Waste-to-Energy Networks, in
Computer Aided Process Engineering - 38, Elsevier, London.
Bolis Vasco, Capón-García Elisabet, Hungerbühler Konrad, Optimal Design of Multi-Enterprise Industrial Waste-to-Energy Networks, in
Computer Aided Process Engineering", Elsevier, London.
The energy demand of the industrial sector represents about 20% of the total demand in Switzerland, the third in importance after transports and households (approximately 35% and 30%, respectively). This fact taken together with the comparatively limited number of actors or sites hence makes efforts devoted to increase energy efficiency and to reduce energy and resource consumption in industry a high priority. In this sense, industrial waste-to-energy (WtE) technologies can increase heat recovery and electric efficiency, reducing overall emissions and fossil energy demand. Moreover, industrial waste treatment plants or co-processing units typically have dynamic import/export portfolios due to exchanges with other industrial facilities. Therefore, there is a need to optimise the plant operation as well as the system-wide interactions of industrial networks to ensure high overall energy efficiency by making maximal use of the energy contained in waste. In addition, the energy savings that can be realised through the use of secondary materials and substitution of primary production from a life cycle perspective should also be considered.The goal of this research project is to provide and apply practical tools for facilitating the decision-making in industrial WtE management and resource recovery systems. Key criteria concern fulfilling treatment requirements for the generated waste streams based on the relevant treatment capacities under technical, logistical, and regulatory constraints, and to improve the overall flexibility to deal with operational uncertainty.Systematic modelling and optimization are the two main approaches used in this work for tackling the waste management and plant integration problems. Systematic modelling pursues the adequate representation of the elements comprised in industrial waste management and resource recovery systems, whereas optimization-based techniques aim at the application of algorithms for solving the posed problems to obtain optimal solutions under relevant constraints. The resulting strategies will be tested on four industrial case studies, which will be conducted in collaboration with the industry. Overall, this project aims to the reduction of primary energy consumption in the industrial sector by maximizing the efficiency of using waste as secondary energy and material source and, in this way, to contribute to the realisation of the energy reduction targets of the “Energy Strategy 2050”.