Exergy Sustainability Indicators as a Tool in Industrial Ecology

Abstract: Life-cycle assessment is an established tool for industrial ecology. An analysis of the energy use in the chemical and other energy-intensive industries is still under discussion in this field. We argue that the concept of exergy can play a role in industrial ecology, using a recent Norwegian power production policy question as illustration. The question is whether to build a standard natural gas- or a hydrogen-fired gas-turbine combined-cycle power plant to meet increased needs for electricity in Norway. Several indicators are relevant for this discussion, and we calculate three based on exergy calculations, as proposed in the literature. The indicators are exergy renewability, exergy efficiency, and environmental compatibility. We show how these indicators can be used to evaluate paths for sustainable power production in two gas-fired combined-cycle power plants. We found that the two plants in question were equivalent, as judged by their exergy renewability and their environmental compatibility, but not by their exergy efficiency. This indicator favored the standard power plant, possibly in combination with carbon dioxide (CO₂) sequestration in a depleted gas reservoir. The analysis suggested that the present situation for power production in gas-fired combined-cycle power plants is such that one may have to choose in general between power production with a high exergy efficiency, but low renewability indicator, or the opposite, low exergy efficiency and high renewability indicator. The general importance of exergy analysis was demonstrated by this example. It enables communication between different professional groups. The technological details, understood by the engineers, can be transposed to meaningful aggregated indicators for decision makers.     

Systems ecological accounting for wastewater treatment engineering: Method,indicator and application

Wastewater treatment facility is vital for sustainable urban development. In the course of removing contaminants and discharging ready-for-reuse water, wastewater treatment consumes resources and triggers environmental emission during its lifetime. A comprehensive framework to analyze the embodied ecological elements as natural resources and environmental emissions of wastewater treatment is presented in this work. The systems method as a combination of process and input–output analyses is applied and a set of indicators are accordingly devised. Two representative ecological elements, i.e., greenhouse gases emissions and solar emergy of alternative wastewater treatment systems, i.e., a traditional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant and a constructed wetland have been taken into consideration. For each ecological element, five indicators have been calculated and compared to assess the impact on climate change and resources utilizing style of the case systems. The framework raised in this paper is fully supportive for optimal decision-making among different wastewater treatment technologies, and could be transplanted to be applied to systems ecological accounting for other production systems.     

基于生态流方法的土地整治项目对农田生态系统的影响研究

将土地整治活动作为外界对农田生态系统(项目区)集中性的外部激励,以陕西关中凤翔县典型土地整治项目为例,分析了项目实施前后生态流(物质流、能量流、信息流)变化状况,建立了土地整治生态影响概念性模型,明确了相应生态流的流向与路径关系,使用可用能法和能值法测算项目区外部输入及生态产品输出,应用生态流分析法,对土地整治项目生态流和系统效率进行了定量计算。根据设定的土地整治工程使用年限,评估了项目实施后区域净生态价值、自然资源依赖度、可更新资源依赖度、生态产出率、生态承载力和生态可持续度等指标的时间变化过程。得到以下研究结果:(1)可用能法和能值法测算出的系统生态效益均呈现由项目建设初期陡降为负值,而后指数增加,再趋于平稳的过程;(2)可用能法测算出项目实施后的第29年,生态效益由亏转盈,体现出系统从被扰乱后恢复自然平衡状态的过程;(3)能值法测算出项目实施后的第4年,生态系统趋于平衡状态;(4)研究区土地整治项目的经济效益为负,于项目实施3a后趋于平稳,总投资中农业生产年投入占资金总额的78.35%。通过可用能和能值方法的结合,可以定量计算系统稳定性,为土地整治项目的物质、劳动力和资金投资选择等提供借鉴。     

基于生命周期的户用沼气系统可用能核算——以广西恭城瑶族自治县为例

发展沼气生态农业可以实现资源的综合利用,带来经济效益与生态效益,同时解决我国农村地区能源短缺和环境污染问题。明确沼气系统内部的物质能量转化利用情况,可为沼气农业系统优化和效益提升提供科学依据。提出基于生命周期的户用沼气系统可用能核算方法,并以全国生态农业示范县——广西恭城瑶族自治县为例,核算了该县典型户用沼气系统建设、运行和利用单元投入产出的可用能流,分析了整个系统的可用能转化与利用效率。结果表明:系统的可用能投入为(1.06×108)kJ/a,可用能产出为(5.00×107)kJ/a,主要产出形式为沼渣;可用能转化率为48.82%,利用率为21.60%,其中沼气利用效率最高;系统产生的环境排放为(3.42×105)kJ/a,主要形式为系统利用单元沼气燃烧产生的CO2。由此可见,沼气生态农业可通过增加转化环节实现农业废弃物的再利用,系统可用能效率具备极大的提升空间,系统可持续性有待加强。可以考虑从改进工艺技术和改善发酵环境两方面提高户用沼气系统能量转化的能力,通过沼渣沼液综合利用技术方面的创新提高户用沼气系统的可用能利用效率。生命周期可用能核算方法可以更全面的反映系统的能量利用效率,便于诊断薄弱环节,为系统优化提供依据。     

A Framework for Modeling Local Production Systems with Techno‐Ecological Interactions

At the local scale, interconnected production, consumption, waste management, and other man‐made technological components interact with local ecosystem components to form a local production system. The purpose of this work is to develop a framework for the conceptual characterization and mathematical modeling of a local production system to support the assessment of process and component options that potentially create symbiosis between industry and ecosystem. This framework has been applied to a case study to assess options for the establishment of a local energy production system that involves a heathland ecosystem, bioenergy production, and wastewater treatment. We found that the framework is useful to analyze the two‐way interactions between these components in order to obtain insight into the behavior and performance of the bioenergy production system. In particular, the framework enables exploring the levels of the ecosystem states that allow continuous provisioning of resources in order to establish a sustainable techno‐ecological system.     

Improved exergetic life cycle assessment through matrix reduction technique

Purpose

The concept of exergy can be used in LCA to quantify the value of natural resources consumed in production processes, as well as to assess the environmental impacts of waste streams. Prior studies noted the complexity of exergy accounting for wastes due to the diversity and complexity of waste streams. We develop an improved method to allow for rigorous exergy accounting of both resources and wastes.

Methods

The exergy content of a mass stream depends on many physical characteristics, including temperature, pressure, and chemical composition. We develop a novel matrix reduction technique to reduce data gathering requirements by multiple orders of magnitude. This method predivides the impact matrix into key rows and processes and “rest of economy” flows. Thermodynamic data can then be gathered for key flows emitted by key processes, and all other flows can be modeled using default values with little loss of accuracy.

Results and discussion

Our method is applied to an example LCA of electricity production via a natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) system. The case study finds that life cycle (economy-wide) exergetic efficiency of NGCC electricity production is ≈43 %, compared to a plant-level (local) exergetic efficiency of ≈54 %. The exergy content of life cycle waste flows is contained primarily in chemical exergy and physical exergy of flue gases, with nearly equal contributions. These waste exergy fluxes represent ≈3 % each of total input exergy.

Conclusions

The matrix reduction technique is found to be robust to assumptions about flows that are not directly modeled. By examining ranges of reasonable assumptions about mass flows not specifically modeled, we show that key rows and processes account for the vast majority of exergy content of interventions.

     

Exergetic life cycle assessment of a grid-connected,polycrystalline silicon photovoltaic system

Purpose

Nowadays, the intensive use of natural resources in order to satisfy the increasing energy demand suggests a threat to the implementation of the principles of sustainable development. The present study attempts to approach thermodynamically the depletion of natural resources in the methodological framework and the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA).

Methods

An environmental decision support tool is studied, the exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA). It arises from the convergence of the LCA and exergy analysis (EA) methodologies and attempts to identify the exergetic parameters that are related to the life cycle of the examined system or process. The ELCA methodology, beside the fact that it locates the system parts which involve greater exergy losses, examines the depletion of natural resources (biotic and abiotic) and the sustainable prospective of the examined system or process, under the scope of exergy. In order to obtain concrete results, the ELCA methodology is applied to a large-scale, grid-connected, photovoltaic (PV) system with energy storage that is designed to entirely electrify the Greek island of Nisyros.

Results and discussion

Four discerned cases were studied that reflect the present state and the future development of the PV technology. The exergy flows and balance for the life cycle of the PV system, as they were formed in the ELCA study, showed that the incoming exergy (solar radiation, energy sources, and materials) is not efficiently utilized. The greater exergy losses appear at the stage of the operation of the PV installation. Due to the fact that contribution of the renewable exergy (solar radiation) to the formation of the total incoming exergy of Life Cycle is significant, it emerges that satisfaction of electric power needs with a PV system appears to be exergetic sustainable. The increase of the Life Cycle exergetic efficiency supported by the future technological scenario in contrast to present scenarios emerges from the increased electricity output of the PV system. Consequently, the increased exergetic efficiency involves decreased irreversibility (exergy losses) of the PV system’s life cycle.

Conclusions

The application of ELCA in electricity production technologies exceeds the proven sustainable prospective of the PV systems; however, it aims to show the essence of the application of ELCA methodology in the environmental decision making process. ELCA can be a useful tool for the support and formation of the environmental decision making that can illustrate in terms of exergetic sustainability the examined energy system or process.     

Applying cumulative exergy demand (CExD) indicators to the ecoinvent database

Goal, Scope and Background Exergy has been put forward as an indicator for the energetic quality of resources. The exergy of a resource accounts for the minimal work necessary to form the resource or for the maximally obtainable amount of work when bringing the resource’s components to their most common state in the natural environment. Exergy measures are traditionally applied to assess energy efficiency, regarding the exergy losses in a process system. However, the measure can be utilised as an indicator of resource quality demand when considering the specific resources that contain the exergy. Such an exergy measure indicates the required resources and assesses the total exergy removal from nature in order to provide a product, process or service. In the current work, the exergy concept is combined with a large number of life cycle inventory datasets available with ecoinvent data v1.2. The goal was, first, to provide an additional impact category indicator to Life-Cycle Assessment practitioners. Second, this work aims at making a large source of exergy scores available to scientific communities that apply exergy as a primary indicator for energy efficiency and resource quality demand. Methods The indicator Cumulative Exergy Demand (CExD) is introduced to depict total exergy removal from nature to provide a product, summing up the exergy of all resources required. CExD assesses the quality of energy demand and includes the exergy of energy carriers as well as of non-energetic materials. In the current paper, the exergy concept was applied to the resources contained in the ecoinvent database, considering chemical, kinetic, hydro-potential, nuclear, solar-radiative and thermal exergies. The impact category indicator is grouped into the eight resource categories fossil, nuclear, hydropower, biomass, other renewables, water, minerals, and metals. Exergy characterization factors for 112 different resources were included in the calculations. Results CExD was calculated for 2630 ecoinvent product and process systems. The results are presented as average values and for 26 specific groups containing 1197 products, processes and infrastructure units. Depending on the process/product group considered, energetic resources make up between 9% and 100% of the total CExD, with an average contribution of 88%. The exergy of water contributes on the average to 8% the total exergy demand, but to more than 90% in specific process groups. The average contribution of minerals and metal ores is 4%, but shows an average value as high as 38% and 13%, in metallic products and in building materials, respectively. Looking at individual processes, the contribution of the resource categories varies substantially from these average product group values. In comparison to Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) and the abiotic-resource-depletion category of CML 2001 (CML’01), non-energetic resources tend to be weighted more strongly by the CExD method. Discussion Energy and matter used in a society are not destroyed but only transformed. What is consumed and eventually depleted is usable energy and usable matter. Exergy is a measure of such useful energy. Therefore, CExD is a suitable energy based indicator for the quality of resources that are removed from nature. Similar to CED, CExD assesses energy use, but regards the quality of the energy and incorporates non-energetic materials like minerals and metals. However, it can be observed for non-renewable energy-intensive products that CExD is very similar to CED. Since CExD considers energetic and non-energetic resources on the basis of exhaustible exergy, the measure is comparable to resource indicators like the resource use category of Eco-indicator 99 and the resource depletion category of CML 2001. An advantage of CExD in comparison to these methods is that exergy is an inherent property of the resource. Therefore less assumptions and subjective choices need to be made in setting up characterization factors. However, CExD does not coversocietal demand (distinguishing between basic demand and luxury), availability or scarcity of the resource. As a consequence of the different weighting approach, CExD may differ considerably from the resource category indicators in Eco-indicator 99 and CML 2001. Conclusions The current work shows that the exergy concept can be operationalised in product life cycle assessments. CExD is a suitable indicator to assess energy and resource demand. Due to the consideration of the quality of energy and the integration of non-energetic resources, CExD is a more comprehensive indicator than the widely used CED. All of the eight CExD categories proposed are significant contributors to Cumulative Exergy Demand in at least one of the product groups analysed. In product or service assessments and comparative assertions, a careful and concious selection of the appropriate CExD-categories is required based on the energy and resource quality demand concept to be expressed by CExD. Recommendations and Perspectives A differentiation between the exergy of fossil, nuclear, hydro-potential, biomass, other renewables, water and mineral/metal resources is recommended in order to obtain a more detailed picture of resource quality demand and to recognise trade-offs between resource use, for instance energetic and non-energetic raw materials, or nonrenewable and renewable energies. ESS-Submission Editor: Dr. Gerald Rebitzer (Gerald.Rebitzer@alcan.com)     

Thermodynamic resource indicators in LCA: a case study on the titania produced in Panzhihua city, southwest China

Purpose

While life cycle assessment (LCA) has standardized methods for assessing emission impacts, some comparable methods for the accounting or impact assessment of resource use exist, but are not as mature or standardized. This study contributes to the existing research by offering a comprehensive comparison of the similarities and differences of different resource indicators, in particular those based on thermodynamics, and testing them in a case study on titania (titanium dioxide pigment) produced in Panzhihua city, southwest China.

Materials and methods

The system boundary for resource indicators is defined using a thermodynamic hierarchy at four levels, and the case data for titania also follow that hierarchy. Seven resource indicators are applied. Four are thermodynamics-based??cumulative energy demand (CED), solar energy demand (SED), cumulative exergy demand (CExD), and cumulative exergy extraction from the natural environment (CEENE)??and three have different backgrounds: abiotic resource depletion potential, environmental priority strategies, and eco-indicator 99. Inventory data for the foreground system has been collected through on-site interviews and visits. Background inventory data are from the database ecoinvent v2.2. Characterizations factors are based on the CML-IA database covering all major methods. Computations are with the CMLCA software.

Results and discussion

The scores of resource indicators of the chloride route for titania system are lower than that of the sulfate route by 10?C35?%, except in terms of SED. Within the four thermodynamic indicators for resources, CED, CExD, and CEENE have similar scores, while their scores are five orders of magnitude lower than the SED score. Atmospheric resources do not contribute to the SED or CEEND score. Land resources account for a negligible percentage to the SED score and a small percentage to the CEENE score. Non-renewable resources have a dominant contribution to all seven resource indicators. The global production of titania would account for 0.12 and 0.14?% of the total anthropogenic non-renewable resource demand in terms of energy and exergy, respectively.

Conclusions

First, we demonstrate the feasibility of thermodynamic resource indicators. We recommend CEENE as the most appropriate one within the four thermodynamic resource indicators for accounting and characterizing resource use. Regarding the case study on the titania produced in China, all the resource indicators except SED show that the sulfate route demands more resource use than the chloride route.     

Can an Environmental Indicator valid both at the local and global scales be derived on a thermodynamic basis?

Environmental considerations are becoming an essential part of any energy conversion assessment: the concept of “environmental impact” has substantially evolved in the last decade, from a pure “assessment of ecological damage” (pollution) to a more complex and omnicomprehensive, but at the same time more detailed, examination of the local and global implications of the interactions of anthropic processes with the biosphere at large. This paper proposes an Environmental Indicator derived strictly on thermodynamic concepts and defines a procedure for its application to both local and global scales in a rationally sound and convenient fashion. The new indicator is the extended exergy cost, ee_C, and is a measure of the primary (exergy) resources embodied in a material or immaterial product. It is shown that such an EI can successfully include the “externalities” (Labor, Capital and Environmental Remediation costs) that affect the planning of anthropic energy conversion systems, and that it can also be employed to assess the evolutionary patterns of natural systems. Some conceptual examples of application are provided to demonstrate that ee_C is indeed a useful tool for the quantification of real -i.e., resource based- environmental costs and for their proper internalization in both engineering and system studies.     

Material flow analysis for Europe: An exergoecological approach

Material flow analysis is a key tool to quantify and monitor the use of natural resources. A very visual way to undertake such analyses representing the mineral trade is through Sankey diagrams, in which the mineral resources that are extracted, imported, exported, recycled and consumed within the given boundaries are represented with the arrows proportional to their respective quantities. Yet Sankey diagrams alone are not sensitive to the quality of the resources as they only reflect tonnage. This issue can lead to misleading conclusions and thereby not effective resource policies. A way to overcome this deficiency is representing the flows in exergy replacement cost (ERC) terms instead of tonnage. Exergy replacement cost is a concept derived from the second law of thermodynamics and assesses the exergy cost required to return with available technologies a given mineral to its initial conditions of composition and concentration in the mines where it was found, once it has been dispersed after use. Using this methodology, minerals are physically valued in terms of their respective scarcities and the effort (in exergy cost terms) required to produce them. Accordingly, in this paper the so-called exergoecology method is used to evaluate mineral trade and foreign mineral dependency in the EU-28 for 1995 to 2012. Using the year 2011 as a case study, it can be seen using this novel approach that 45.8% of the total input of minerals are imported resulting in lower values of self-sufficiency than if a traditional MFA were applied (0.45 for minerals and 0.41 for fossil fuels, in contrast to 0.79 and 0.52 obtained respectively when using tonnes). Analyzing 10 of the 20 minerals deemed critical by the European Commission, of the total internal production, 0.88% corresponded to critical minerals when data were expressed in tonnes and 3.19% when expressed in exergy replacement costs, highlighting their relevance respect to other minerals. This external dependency leaves Europe in a delicate situation regarding fossil fuels and non-fuel minerals supply highlighting the importance of recycling especially scarce minerals and searching for alternative sources.     

基于扩展耗模型的可持续发展水平区域空间差异——以中国31个省市为数据源

将区域作为一个以人类生产和消费为中心的社会-经济-自然复合生态系统,构建了一种基于生物物理视角的生态热力学方法,从整体角度对区域的可持续发展水平进行定量评价。该方法囊括了维持复合生态系统运转过程中的自然资源投入、人力资源投入和环境污染损害成本投入等三种要素,完善了可持续发展评价以及绿色GDP核算中人力资源投入和环境成本的价值体现。然后以我国为例,核算了我国31个省市2006—2015年间可持续发展水平的时间动态,并以各省为边界,计算了2015年的区域可持续发展水平差异。计算结果显示:(1)十年间,我国整体上的可持续发展水平在逐步提高,能反映出我国生产率水平的提高和资源利用效率的提高;(2)从要素投入看,自然资源投入仍然占主要,但比例在逐渐降低。环境成本投入比例呈逐步降低趋势,说明环境保护取得了成效。另外,在2010年后,人力资源投入比例增加很快,反映了我国经济发展中劳动力成本上升明显。(3)各省市的计算结果差异较大,在不考虑区域间进出口的情况下,从GDP产出角度,北京的可持续发展水平最高,西藏最低。通过将本文的评价结果与绿色发展指数的评价结果进行比较,发现具有较好的一致性。建立的方法框架是对能值分析方法的扩展和完善,在今后的研究中,还需要继续对该方法框架中没有考虑全面的因素加以考虑,以便于更全面客观地反映区域的可持续发展水平。     

表面活性剂对木质纤维素酶解产糖的影响研究进展

木质纤维素是生产生物燃料乙醇的主要原料,其含量丰富、绿色环保以及可再生性,因此有效地利用木质纤维素有望解决能源短缺问题。表面活性剂能够有效地促进木质纤维素的酶解反应,通过探讨不同表面活性剂对酶解反应的影响及机理,为实际的酶解过程找到合适表面活性剂提供一定的理论指导。     

A Comprehensive Energy and Economic Assessment of Biofuels: When “Green” Is Not Enough

Referee: Dr. Charles A. S. Hall, Department of Environmental Studies, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210 Biofuel production systems are sometimes claimed to be able to fill in for future fossil fuel shortages as well as to decrease carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. As such, they are often promoted as a “green” alternative to fossil fuels. I present a comprehensive, system-based case study of biofuel production from maize or corn (Zea mays L.) and evaluate it critically in this review. The case study is taken as an example of the comprehensive approach that I suggest for any energy crop. I conclude that the biofuel option on a large scale is not a viable alternative based on economic, energy and eMergy (amount of available energy [exergy] of one form [usually solar] that is directly or indirectly required to provide a given flow or storage of exergy or matter) analyses of the case study data and estimated possible improvement of yield and efficiency. This is true for developed countries due to their huge energy demand compared with what biofuel options are able to supply as well as for developing countries due to the low yield of their agriculture and competition for land and water for food production. However, biofuels may contribute to optimizing the energy and resource balance of agricultural, livestock, or industrial production systems at an appropriate scale. I present a proposal to integrate ethanol production with industrial activities within a “zero emission framework” as a suggestion for optimization strategies capable of making the biofuel option more sustainable and profitable in those cases where it is appropriate.     

A decision-making approach to the operation of flexible manufacturing systems

This paper introduces a generic decision-making framework for assigning resources of a manufacturing system to production tasks. Resources are broadly defined production units, such as machines, human operators, or material handling vehicles; and tasks are activities performed by resources. In the specific context of FMS, resources correspond to individual machines; tasks correspond to operations to be performed on parts. The framework assumes a hierarchical structure of the system and calls for the execution of four consecutive steps to make a decision for the assignment of a resource to a task. These steps are 1) establishment of decision-making criteria, 2) formation of alternative assignments, 3) estimation of the consequences of the assignments, and 4) selection of the best alternative assignment. This framework has been applied to an existing FMS as an operational policy that decides what task will be executed on which resource of this FMS. Simulation runs provide some initial results of the application of this policy. It is shown that the policy provides flexibility in terms of system performance and computational effort.     

The Structure, Function, and Evolution of a Regional Industrial Ecosystem

A framework has been developed to assess the structure, function, and evolution of a regional industrial ecosystem that integrates insights from industrial ecology and economic geography dimensions with complex systems theory. The framework highlights the multilayered landscape of natural ecosystem functions, economic transactions, policy contexts, and social interactions in which interfirm collaboration evolves. Its application to a single case study on the island of Puerto Rico revealed changes in the system's institutional context, its resource flows, and the composition of its industrial community. It illustrated that external forces and interactions among actors at multiple levels can cause permanent changes—but not necessarily system collapse—as policy choices and interfirm cooperation can be used to organize resources in ways that retain system functionality.     

Embodied Resource Flows in a Global Economy

This article presents a methodology for identifying critical links in global resource supply chains by tracking resources from their extraction in one region of the world economy through their embodiment in intermediate products in the same and other regions to eventual embodiment in final goods. We build on previous work that applied an absorbing Markov chain (AMC) to results obtained using an input‐output (IO) model of a single region to define a resource‐specific network within that economy. In the absence of model calculations, the AMC can also be applied to standard IO data for a past year. This article first generalizes the analytic framework from a single region to the important case of the global resource‐specific network. This network typically includes cycling of embodied resources between sectors not only within each economy, but also among regions, as subsequent rounds of intermediate products are traded. Next, we refine that analysis to exhibit a crucial subnetwork, the resource end‐use network, which only tracks the portion of the resource that ends up embodied in a specific final product in a given region. Finally, we develop techniques to distinguish key branches of these networks and provide detailed insights about the structure of global resource dependence. A numerical example is applied to results of scenario analysis using an IO model of the world economy. Two alternative scenarios are compared. In each scenario, embodied resources are carried over specific branches of a global network in three regions using three resources to produce four goods.     

Ecological accounting for an integrated “pig–biogas–fish” system based on emergetic indicators

With the expansion of urbanization in China, the integrated biogas-utilization system has gained its popularity for both renewable energy production and multi-level utilization of organic waste. To appraise the ecological performance of the integrated biogas system, systematic accounting is undertaken for an integrated “pig–biogas–fish” system in Hubei province, China. Based on Odum's concept of embodied solar energy as a unified measure for environmental resources, human labors and purchased goods, a set of emergetic indicators are employed to quantify the system sustainability. The results reveal that in a 20-year designed lifetime scenario, 94.69% of the total emergy inputs for the “pig–biogas–fish” system are attributed to purchased social resources. Three kinds of products, namely pig, biogas, fish are taken into consideration, and transformity of the “pig–biogas–fish” system is calculated as 1.26E + 05 seJ/J. Compared with the Chinese conventional agriculture system, the integrated biogas system shows a higher sustainability. Given that most biogas systems have a lifespan less than 20 years, for the “pig–biogas–fish” system, six other scenarios with different lifespans are studied to investigate the impact of the lifespan on sustainability. The findings suggest that the “pig–biogas–fish” system should be well operated for at least 8 years to prove its advantage in ecological economy over the conventional agriculture system. This has essential policy implications that local government should strengthen subsequent management on biogas production to extend the practical service life of the biogas system.     

Use of Symbiosis Products from Integrated Pulp and Paper and Carbon Steel Mills: Legal Status and Environmental Burdens

This study assesses the policy/legal status of both multistream residues and potential secondary products (“symbiosis products”) and whether there could be environmental benefits associated with the utilization of residues from integrated pulp and paper and carbon steel mills as raw materials for such secondary products. Waste‐related European Union (EU) and Finnish policy and legal instruments were reviewed to identify potential constraints for, and suggested next steps in, the development of potential process industry residue‐based symbiosis products. The products were soil amendment pellets, low‐grade concrete, and mine filler. A global warming potential (GWP) assessment and an exergy analysis were applied to these potential symbiosis products. Some indicative GWP calculations of greenhouse gas emissions associating similar and/or analogous products based on virgin primary raw materials, more energy‐intensive processes, and the alternative treatment of these residues as wastes are also presented. This study addresses GWP, exergy, and legal aspects in a holistic manner to determine the potential environmental benefits of secondary products within the EU legal framework. The GWP assessment and exergy analysis indicate that the utilization of multistream residues causes very low environmental burdens in terms of GWP. The utilization option can have potential environmental benefits in terms of GWP through process replacement and avoided landfilling and waste treatment impacts, as well as potentially through emission reductions from product replacement if suitable and safe applications can be identified. Waste regulation does not define the legal requirements under which utilizing residues in such novel concepts as introduced in this study would be possible, nor how waste status could be removed and product‐based legislation be applied to the potential products instead.     

From Grave to Cradle

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a promising tool in the pursuit of sustainable mining. However, the accounting methodologies used in LCA for abiotic resource depletion still have some shortcomings and need to be improved. In this article a new thermodynamic approach is presented for the evaluation of the depletion of nonfuel minerals. The method is based on quantifying the exergy costs required to replace the extracted minerals with current available technologies, from a completely degraded state in what we term “Thanatia” to the conditions currently found in nature. Thanatia is an estimated reference model of a commercial end of the planet, where all resources have been extracted and dispersed, and all fossil fuels have been burned. Mineral deposits constitute an exergy bonus that nature gives us for free by providing minerals in a concentrated state and not dispersed in the crust. The exergy replacement costs provide a measure of the bonus lost through extraction. This approach allows performing an LCA by including a new stage in the analysis: namely the grave to cradle path. The methodology is explained through the case study of nickel depletion.