Modeling and optimization of material/energy flow exchanges in an eco-industrial park

Nowadays, industrial symbiosis is a key concept of industrial ecology, which studies material and energy exchange flows in the local industrial systems to reduce the costs, e.g., the wastes treatment cost, and to reduce the pollution, e.g., greenhouse gas emissions. An industrial park is a set of manufacturing businesses producing different products and by-products located at the same place (city, region, etc.). As the concept of this model encourages the development of synergy and leverage of resource networks, to the advantage of all of the enterprises present in an industrial park, a general mathematical model has been proposed. The aims of this general model are: to maximize total quantity of exchanges flows, to maximize total economic benefice of an industrial park, and to reduce relative environmental pollution, industrial waste treatment cost and delivery cost. This model can assure a win-win situation for industries and environment. There are rigorous mathematical models for specific ecological industrial parks [1]. To the best of our knowledge, there is no currently other general mathematical model for designing and optimizing an ecological industrial park. In addition, there is no currently complete ecological industrial park in France. © 2013 Chao GU, Sébastien LEVENEUR, Lionel ESTEL, Adnan YASSINE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of TerraGreen Academy.