A Systematic Approach to Multi-Resource Integration in Industrial Parks over Time

Abstract

The global pursuit for sustainability led to industrial parks, where traditionally separate operations are integrated to achieve greater overall economic, environmental, and social benefits that would otherwise be unattainable. When process integration enables industrial symbioses in these industrial parks, they allow for creating systems that integrate multiple resources, leading to a circular economy. With time, changes in the form of technological advancements, market fluctuations, and regulatory strategies are inevitable in the multiple internal and external facets that define an industrial park. As such, variations in design are expected over time, for which various approaches have been developed to understand the temporal nature of resource integration in industrial parks. Generally, either the number of resources analyzed is constrained, which sharply limits the possibility of all other exchanges, or when multiple resources are considered, they only explore integration in a single period. A resource integration approach that considers multiple resources over multiple periods is proposed through this research to understand the design of industrial parks over time. By using input-output process modules that enable the integration of multiple resources combined with a net present value analysis that accounts for the time value of money, the optimal network can be determined for a specific user-defined objective function. The optimization approach is illustrated through a case study that analyzes the decarbonization of a natural gas feedstock in an industrial park with carbon capture utilization and storage options and negative emission technologies.