Industrial Symbiosis in the Australian Minerals Industry: The Cases of Kwinana and Gladstone

The realization of regional synergies in industrial areas with intensive minerals processing provides a significant avenue toward sustainable resource processing. This article provides an overview of past and current synergy developments in two of Australia's major heavy industrial regions, Kwinana (Western Australia) and Gladstone (Queensland), and includes a comparative review and assessment of the drivers, barriers, and trigger events for regional synergies initiatives in both areas. Kwinana and Gladstone compare favorably with well‐known international examples in terms of the current level and maturity of industry involvement and collaboration and the commitment to further explore regional resource synergies. Kwinana stands out with regard to the number, diversity, complexity, and maturity of existing synergies. Gladstone is remarkable with regard to unusually large geographic boundaries and high dominance of one industry sector. Many diverse regional synergy opportunities still appear to exist in both industrial regions (particularly in Kwinana), mostly in three broad areas: water, energy, and inorganic by‐product reuse. To enhance the further development of new regional synergies, the Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing (CSRP), a joint initiative of Australian minerals processing companies, research providers, and government agencies, has undertaken several collaborative projects. These include research to facilitate the process of identifying and evaluating potential synergy opportunities and assistance for the industries with feasibility studies and implementation of selected synergy projects in both regions. The article also reports on the progress to date from this CSRP research.     

Barriers to Industrial Symbiosis: Insights from the Use of a Maturity Grid

The concept of industrial symbiosis (IS) over the last 20 years has become a well‐recognized approach for environmental improvements at the regional level. Many technical solutions for waste and by‐product material, water, and energy reuse between neighboring industries (so‐called synergies) have been discovered and applied in the IS examples from all over the world. However, the potential for uptake of new synergies in the regions is often limited by a range of nontechnical barriers. These barriers include environmental regulation, lack of cooperation and trust between industries in the area, economic barriers, and lack of information sharing. Although several approaches to help identify and overcome some of the nontechnical barriers were examined, no methodology was found that systematically assessed and tracked the barriers to guide the progress of IS development. This article presents a new tool—IS maturity grid—to tackle this issue in the regional IS studies. The tool helps monitor and assess the level of regional industrial collaboration and also indicates a potential path for further improvements and development in an industrial region, depending on where that region currently lies in the grid. The application of the developed tool to the Gladstone industrial region of Queensland, Australia, is presented in the article. It showed that Gladstone is at the third (active) stage of five stages of maturity, with cooperation and trust among industries the strongest characteristic and information barriers the characteristic for greatest improvement.     

Synergy Management Services Companies: A New Business Model for Industrial Park Operators

The concept of industrial symbiosis (IS) was introduced decades ago and its environmental and economic benefits are well established, but the broad acceptance of IS still faces significant barriers. This article provides a new approach to capture synergies within industrial parks by suggesting a new business model. Building on findings from a survey conducted by the authors and on literature, we first identify potential barriers to low‐carbon synergistic projects. Economic concerns of technically feasible synergies and financial issues turn out to be the largest barriers, because of long payback periods and fluctuating raw material and by‐product market prices. Existing business models do not offer easy ways to overcome or relax these barriers. We therefore introduce the concept of a synergy management services company (SMSCO), a synergy contractor and third‐party financing model, to overcome these barriers. This model shifts the financial risk of the synergistic project from collaborating firms to the SMSCO. We posit that this attribute of the SMSCO model makes it attractive for industrial park operators who seek long‐term solutions to secure future viability of their park.     

Bringing Web 2.0 to bioinformatics

Enabling deft data integration from numerous, voluminous andheterogeneous data sources is a major bioinformatic challenge.Several approaches have been proposed to address this challenge,including data warehousing and federated databasing. Yet despitethe rise of these approaches, integration of data from multiplesources remains problematic and toilsome. These two approachesfollow a user-to-computer communication model for data exchange,and do not facilitate a broader concept of data sharing or collaborationamong users. In this report, we discuss the potential of Web2.0 technologies to transcend this model and enhance bioinformaticsresearch. We propose a Web 2.0-based Scientific Social Community(SSC) model for the implementation of these technologies. Byestablishing a social, collective and collaborative platformfor data creation, sharing and integration, we promote a webservices-based pipeline featuring web services for computer-to-computerdata exchange as users add value. This pipeline aims to simplifydata integration and creation, to realize automatic analysis,and to facilitate reuse and sharing of data. SSC can fostercollaboration and harness collective intelligence to createand discover new knowledge. In addition to its research potential,we also describe its potential role as an e-learning platformin education. We discuss lessons from information technology,predict the next generation of Web (Web 3.0), and describe itspotential impact on the future of bioinformatics studies.      

Industrial Waste Reuse and By‐product Synergy Optimization

By‐product synergy is a growing practice worldwide. It consists in the maximization of resources utilization with the replacement of raw materials by by‐products as inputs for industrial processes. In order to support decision making in such strategic projects, appropriate tools must be developed. This article presents the results of a research project, which includes the development of a multiobjective mathematical programming model for the optimization of by‐product flows, synergy configurations, and investment decisions in eco‐industrial networks. This model is evaluated using data related to the Kalundborg industrial symbiosis (IS) in order to illustrate its utilization, as well as to assess, in a retrospective manner, the behavior of the companies involved with respect to both economic and environmental benefits of synergies. The experiments also illustrate the influence of the municipality on synergy implementation and how a scenario‐based approach can be used to anticipate raw material price increase. The results are generally coherent with the actual timing of synergy initializations. Further, the considerable effect of water price on the length of investments’ payback period illustrates the impact of policies and regulations on IS.     

Material Flow Optimization in By‐product Synergy Networks

By‐product synergy (BPS) is an industrial ecology practice that involves utilization of industrial by‐products as feedstocks for other industrial processes. A novel decision support tool is developed to analyze BPS networks that involve material processing and transport among regional clusters of companies. Mathematical programming techniques are used to determine the optimal network design and the material flows that minimize total cost or environmental impacts. This methodology is incorporated into a graphical software package called Eco‐Flow?. The tool has been applied to model and analyze available synergies in an existing BPS network centered in Kansas City, Missouri. A base case, which assumes no synergies, is compared with the optimal BPS solution found by Eco‐Flow?. The results for Kansas City suggest that when companies in the network cooperate to optimize the system profitability, up to $15 million per year of savings are possible. The findings also indicate that the BPS approach would result in 29% reduction in total cost, 25.8% reduction in average company cost, 30% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, and 37% reduction in waste to landfill. The modeling approach is being extended to better represent the dynamics of industrial and ecological processes.     

Redefining Industrial Symbiosis

The most commonly cited definition of industrial symbiosis (IS), by Chertow (2000) , has served well to foster discussion and research for more than a decade. The definition reflected the state of research and practice at the time; as both have advanced, some terms have been interpreted in substantially different ways. In this article we analyze those generally used terms for their connection to the ecological metaphor that is the root of industrial ecology, and their varied interpretations in IS research and practice over time. We then propose an updated definition intended to communicate the essence of IS as a tool for innovative green growth: IS engages diverse organizations in a network to foster eco‐innovation and long‐term culture change. Creating and sharing knowledge through the network yields mutually profitable transactions for novel sourcing of required inputs and value‐added destinations for non‐product outputs, as well as improved business and technical processes. We posit that, although geographic proximity is often associated with IS, it is neither necessary nor sufficient—nor is a singular focus on physical resource exchange.     

Promoting Industrial Symbiosis: Using the Concept of Proximity to Explore Social Network Development

Industrial symbiosis (IS) has been identified as a strategy for promoting industrial sustainability. IS has been defined as the development of close working agreements between industrial and other organizations that, through the innovative reuse, recycling, or sharing of resources, leads to resource efficiency. Key to IS are innovation and social network development. This article critically reviews IS literature and concludes that, to inform proactive strategies for promoting IS, the understanding of the social processes leading to resource innovation needs to be improved. Industrial ecologists generally believe that close geographical proximity and trust are essential to the development of IS. This article argues, however, that there is a need to learn more about the meaning of, need for, and specific role of geographical proximity and trust in IS and, additionally, that other potentially important social factors have remained underexplored. To move IS research forward, this article suggests to engage with research in economic geography on the concept of ‘proximity,’ which draws attention to the ways in which geographical, cognitive, institutional, social, and organizational distances between actors might affect innovation. Arguably, the analytically distinct, but flexible, dimensions of proximity can be useful to explore how and why IS develops. The resulting qualitative knowledge would form a basis for researching whether general patterns for IS development exist and, more important, could inform public and private strategies that indicate which actions could be taken, as well as when and in what way to promote resource synergies and sustainable industrial development.     

Information retrieval and knowledge discovery utilising a biomedical Semantic Web

Although various ontologies and knowledge sources have been developed in recent years to facilitate biomedical research, it is difficult to assimilate information from multiple knowledge sources. To enable researchers to easily gain understanding of a biomedical concept, a biomedical Semantic Web that seamlessly integrates knowledge from biomedical ontologies, publications and patents would be very helpful. In this paper, current research efforts in representing biomedical knowledge in Semantic Web languages are surveyed. Techniques are presented for information retrieval and knowledge discovery from the Semantic Web that extend traditional keyword search and database querying techniques. Finally, some of the challenges that have to be addressed to make the vision of a biomedical Semantic Web a reality are discussed.     

Using an Industrial Waste Account to Facilitate National Level Industrial Symbioses by Uncovering the Waste Exchange Potential

The identification of potential by‐product exchanges is important for fostering industrial symbiosis. To discover these potential exchanges, this article extends the analysis of local industrial symbiosis to a national scale. A waste input‐output table, which is a material flow accounting tool, was compiled and used as a database to examine the existing exchanges of by‐products. The supplies and demands of industrial wastes or by‐products were compared to highlight their potential use for promoting higher exchange flows. The analysis of the linkages indicated that the majority of each of the by‐products were reused by the few industries that had the technology and operational capacity for reuse. This finding is useful for determining which industries are good candidates for promoting further industrial symbiosis (IS). Based on a nation‐wide analysis that considered the industrial characteristics of Taiwan comprehensively, 23 types of major by‐products with greater reuse flows and 216 potential exchange patterns were identified between the industries. In addition, three types of eco‐industrial networks were characterized as follows according to their dominant types: (1) fossil fuel, metal, and mineral‐dominated; (2) agricultural and synthetic material‐dominated; and (3) information and communications technology (ICT) and chemical industry‐dominated eco‐industrial networks. This analysis highlights the resource exchange potentials and provides information to new firms for networking with existing businesses.     

Evaluation and Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Reductions in Industrial Symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis (IS) exchanges have been recognized to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, though methods for quantification of GHG emissions in IS exchanges are varied, and no standardized methods are available. This article proposes a practical approach to quantify total and allocated GHG emissions from IS exchanges by integrating the GHG protocol and life cycle assessment. The proposed method expands the system boundaries to include all IS companies, and the functional flow is set to be the sum of the main products. The total impact of a company is allocated to the main product. Three by‐product impact allocation methods of cutoff, avoidance, and 50/50 are proposed, and the total and distributed impacts of the IS systems in an industrial park are theoretically derived. The proposed method was tested to quantify GHG reduction in a real IS exchange developed between Korea Zinc (a zinc smelter) and Hankook Paper (a paper mill company) in the Ulsan Eco‐Industrial Park initiative. The total reduction of GHG emissions in this IS exchange, 60,522 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, was the same in the GHG protocol, whereas GHG distribution between two companies depended on the allocation method. Given that the reduction of GHG emissions from IS exchanges is the product of the collaboration of giving companies and receiving companies, the 50/50 allocation method is best from an equivalent‐responsibility and benefit‐sharing perspective. However, this study suggests a more practical implementation approach based on a flexible and negotiable method of allocating the total GHG reduction between stakeholders.     

Framework for Applying a Complex Adaptive System Approach to Model the Operation of Eco‐Industrial Parks

Models of eco‐industrial parks (EIPs) might help us transform our production systems by fostering the emergence of sustainable EIPs since such models have the potential to support the decision‐making processes of cooperative companies that participate and to decrease operational uncertainties. In this article, a conceptual framework for modeling the operation of EIPs is presented. The framework is underpinned by complex adaptive systems theory, industrial ecology, and an analysis of the experiences of existing EIPs. The proposed framework draws on the observed strengths of two types of industrial symbiosis models—planned eco‐industrial parks (PEIPs) and EIPs that developed through self‐organizing symbiosis (SOS)—as well as their observed weaknesses and the features of complex adaptive systems. From this analysis, five key properties to be modeled are deduced: functionality, reliability, life span, theoretical knowledge, and adaptability. It is proposed that the properties of functionality and theoretical knowledge are determined by the goals of the EIP and its member companies, while the property of adaptability is determined by the understanding that the companies in an EIP have of the environment surrounding the EIP, while the properties of reliability and life span are determined by the internal and external relationships of the companies that make up an EIP.     

Dynamic Models of Fixed Capital Stocks and Their Application in Industrial Ecology

Industrial assets or fixed capital stocks are at the core of the transition to a low‐carbon economy. They represent substantial accumulations of capital, bulk materials, and critical metals. Their lifetime determines the potential for material recycling and how fast they can be replaced by new, more efficient facilities. Their efficiency determines the coupling between useful output and energy and material throughput. A sound understanding of the economic and physical properties of fixed capital stocks is essential to anticipating the long‐term environmental and economic consequences of the new energy future. We identify substantial overlap in the way stocks are modeled in national accounting, dynamic material flow analysis, dynamic input‐output (I/O) analysis, and life cycle assessment (LCA) and we merge these concepts into a common framework for modeling fixed capital stocks. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework for simultaneous accounting of capital and material stocks and for consequential LCA. We apply the framework to design a demand‐driven dynamic I/O model with dynamic capital stocks, and we synthesize both the marginal and attributional matrix of technical coefficients (A‐matrix) from detailed process inventories of fixed assets of different age cohorts and technologies. The stock modeling framework allows researchers to identify and exploit synergies between different model families under the umbrella of socioeconomic metabolism.     

Intercompany Energy Integration

Reusing heat through process integration in heat exchanger networks has long been a key measure for increasing energy efficiency in energy‐intensive industries. Thermal pinch analysis is commonly used for a systematic matching of process streams and thus planning of optimal process integration in large chemical plants. The possible savings increase with the amount of heat and the number of integrated process streams. Therefore co‐ siting of several companies in a symbiotic network opens new opportunities for process integration even in small and medium‐size enterprises (SMEs), but also introduces new challenges. Thermal pinch analysis is extended here to account for piping distances and fluctuations and limited availability of energy flows by adding additional costs for the piping system and a backup utility system in the optimization function. Cooperative game theory is proposed to derive a sharing of savings between the partners of the industrial symbiosis that is optimal for each partner and should prevent partners from leaving the network because of higher benefits in a subgroup or alone. It is argued that knowledge about the optimality of a network for each partner creates trust between the partners that is a necessary base for the long‐term commitment needed in industrial symbioses. An exemplary symbiotic network combining the production of pulp and woody biomass energy carriers is used to illustrate the proposed approaches.     

‘Habitat’ Suitability Index Mapping for Industrial Symbiosis Planning

By ‘working with the willing’, the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) has successfully facilitated industrial symbiosis throughout the United Kingdom and, in the process, delivered significant economic and environmental benefits for both Programme members and the country as a whole. One of the keys to NISP's success is that, unlike failed attempts to plan and construct eco‐industrial systems from scratch, the Programme works largely with existing companies who have already settled in, developed, and successfully operate within a given locale. This article argues that existing and mature industrial systems provide the best prospects for identifying opportunities for, and ultimately facilitating, industrial symbiosis. Due to levels of diversification and operational fundamental niches that, in the fullness of time, develop within all industrial systems, industrially mature areas are deemed to be industrial symbiosis ‘conducive environments’. Building on the conservation biology concept of a habitat suitability index, the article presents a methodology for comparing a potential site for eco‐industrial development to a known baseline industrial ‘habitat’ already identified as being highly conducive to industrial symbiosis. The suitability index methodology is further developed and applied to a multi‐criteria evaluation geographic information system to produce a ‘habitat’ suitability map that allows practitioners to quickly identify potential industrial symbiosis hotspots (the methodology is illustrated for England). The article concludes by providing options for the development of symbiosis suitability indices and how they can be used to support the facilitation of industrial symbiosis and regional resource efficiency.     

Interoperability with Moby 1.0--it's better than sharing your toothbrush!

The BioMoby project was initiated in 2001 from within the modelorganism database community. It aimed to standardize methodologiesto facilitate information exchange and access to analyticalresources, using a consensus driven approach. Six years later,the BioMoby development community is pleased to announce therelease of the 1.0 version of the interoperability framework,registry Application Programming Interface and supporting Perland Java code-bases. Together, these provide interoperable accessto over 1400 bioinformatics resources worldwide through theBioMoby platform, and this number continues to grow. Here wehighlight and discuss the features of BioMoby that make it distinctfrom other Semantic Web Service and interoperability initiatives,and that have been instrumental to its deployment and use bya wide community of bioinformatics service providers. The standard,client software, and supporting code libraries are all freelyavailable at http://www.biomoby.org/.      

Industrial symbiosis in the forestry sector: A case study in southern Brazil

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is an important concept in the field of industrial ecology that has disseminated worldwide as a practice to decrease the ecological impact of industrial processes through the exchange of by‐products and waste between units in a system. The forestry industry is the main economic activity in the region of Lages in southern Brazil. IS relationships have expanded with the use of waste material from wood processing and strengthened cooperation between companies in different sectors. The aims of this article were to: a) quantify the level of IS in the system, b) identify the benefits of IS for participants, and c) explain why the network further developed IS to the formation of an industrial ecosystem. A questionnaire was administered during visits to 24 forestry companies in order to analyze their products and processes, commercial relations, positive impacts, and local insertion. The industrial symbiosis indicator (ISI) was determined using waste stream data from the system to represent the level of symbiosis among the companies in this region. The results show that the companies participate in a symbiotic network, mainly involving the exchange of chips, bark, sawdust and shavings. In most cases, these exchanges occur between nearby companies, constituting an extensive industrial ecosystem.     

Systematic exploration of synergistic drug pairs

Drug synergy allows a therapeutic effect to be achieved with lower doses of component drugs. Drug synergy can result when drugs target the products of genes that act in parallel pathways (‘specific synergy’). Such cases of drug synergy should tend to correspond to synergistic genetic interaction between the corresponding target genes. Alternatively, ‘promiscuous synergy’ can arise when one drug non‐specifically increases the effects of many other drugs, for example, by increased bioavailability. To assess the relative abundance of these drug synergy types, we examined 200 pairs of antifungal drugs in S. cerevisiae. We found 38 antifungal synergies, 37 of which were novel. While 14 cases of drug synergy corresponded to genetic interaction, 92% of the synergies we discovered involved only six frequently synergistic drugs. Although promiscuity of four drugs can be explained under the bioavailability model, the promiscuity of Tacrolimus and Pentamidine was completely unexpected. While many drug synergies correspond to genetic interactions, the majority of drug synergies appear to result from non‐specific promiscuous synergy.     

“Uncovering” Industrial Symbiosis

Since 1989, efforts to understand the nature of interfirm resource sharing in the form of industrial symbiosis and to replicate in a deliberate way what was largely self‐organizing in Kalundborg, Denmark have followed many paths, some with much success and some with very little. This article provides a historical view of the motivations and means for pursuing industrial symbiosis—defined to include physical exchanges of materials, energy, water, and by‐products among diversified clusters of firms. It finds that “uncovering” existing symbioses has led to more sustainable industrial development than attempts to design and build eco‐industrial parks incorporating physical exchanges. By examining 15 proposed projects brought to national and international attention by the U.S. President's Council on Sustainable Development beginning in the early 1990s, and contrasting these with another 12 projects observed to share more elements of self‐organization, recommendations are offered to stimulate the identification and uncovering of already existing “kernels” of symbiosis. In addition, policies and practices are suggested to identify early‐stage precursors of potentially larger symbioses that can be nurtured and developed further. The article concludes that environmentally and economically desirable symbiotic exchanges are all around us and now we must shift our gaze to find and foster them.