Integrated Ecosystem Landscape and Industrial Modeling for Strategic Environmentally Conscious Process Technology Selection

Adopting “greener” manufacturing technologies is one means of reducing facility environmental impacts. To justify such capital investment, more informative environmental impact assessments are needed to determine their effects on the local environment. Since conventional life cycle assessment methods and manufacturing process models ignore consideration of space, time, and local environmental uniqueness, an integrated ecosystem landscape and industrial system (eco-industrial) modelling approach that connects landscape models with facility models has been proposed to overcome these limitations. In this article, the industrial portion of the eco-industrial model is further developed by defining a water consumption model for cleaning processes. Impacts of different cleaning process technologies on the local landscape are explored in a hypothetical case study to illustrate the application of this modelling approach. Results show observable impacts in the ecosystem model, illustrating the potential of using this approach for strategic selection of “greener” manufacturing technologies.