TY - JOUR
T1 - Trade-offs between the recovery, exergy demand and economy in the recycling of multiple resources
AU - Gai, Limei
AU - Varbanov, Petar Sabev
AU - Fan, Yee Van
AU - Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír
AU - Romanenko, Sergey Vladimirovich
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by Tomsk Polytechnic University Competitiveness Enhancement Program Grant No. VIU-RSCABS-199/2020 and also the contribution from the EU project “Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL ”, project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000456 funded by EU “CZ Operational Programme Research, Development and Education”, Priority 1: Strengthening capacity for quality research has been acknowledged, and been also executed via the collaboration contract No. 9627 with the Tomsk Polytechnic University from 17/09/2020.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
N2 - The trade-off between the degree of circularity in industrial and urban processes and the spent resources in terms of energy and funds poses a challenging task. Material and energy flows feature different global patterns, which sets them as two interacting dimensions in the process. This work proposes the Multi-Resource Integration Map concept for modelling the recycling processes and representing the trade-off. The criteria used are based on exergy expenditure and cost, evaluated against the degree of circularity represented by the newly formulated Total Circularity Index (TCI), combining the Circular Material Use rate and Circular Exergy Use rate. The method is demonstrated in a case study from the domain of urban symbiosis where a set of waste resources are available to serve, after processing, part of specified product demands. The results show that the optimal exergy consumption (690 kW, TCI = 0.396) and the optimal Total Annual Cost (102.7 kEUR/y, TCI = 0.359) take place at different but correlating Total Circularity Index values. The optima are 33% lower in terms of cost and 22% lower in terms of exergy than the point of maximum circularity. The method proposed in this paper provides guidance for the integration of multi-resource systems, allowing the decision-makers to estimate the economic and exergy performance of the proposed Circular Economy solutions, aiding in improving the sustainability contributions of industrial and urban systems.
AB - The trade-off between the degree of circularity in industrial and urban processes and the spent resources in terms of energy and funds poses a challenging task. Material and energy flows feature different global patterns, which sets them as two interacting dimensions in the process. This work proposes the Multi-Resource Integration Map concept for modelling the recycling processes and representing the trade-off. The criteria used are based on exergy expenditure and cost, evaluated against the degree of circularity represented by the newly formulated Total Circularity Index (TCI), combining the Circular Material Use rate and Circular Exergy Use rate. The method is demonstrated in a case study from the domain of urban symbiosis where a set of waste resources are available to serve, after processing, part of specified product demands. The results show that the optimal exergy consumption (690 kW, TCI = 0.396) and the optimal Total Annual Cost (102.7 kEUR/y, TCI = 0.359) take place at different but correlating Total Circularity Index values. The optima are 33% lower in terms of cost and 22% lower in terms of exergy than the point of maximum circularity. The method proposed in this paper provides guidance for the integration of multi-resource systems, allowing the decision-makers to estimate the economic and exergy performance of the proposed Circular Economy solutions, aiding in improving the sustainability contributions of industrial and urban systems.
KW - Circular Economy
KW - Exergy
KW - Multi-resource system
KW - Total Circularity Index
KW - Waste recovery
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099645876&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85099645876&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105428
DO - 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105428
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099645876
VL - 167
JO - Resources, Conservation and Recycling
JF - Resources, Conservation and Recycling
SN - 0921-3449
M1 - 105428
ER -