Search

A big problem for industry and large cities is the increasing waste streams from households as well as industries and their impacts to the environment. Treatment of the waste is expensive, and cities face challenges on waste disposal sites. A sustainable solution would be to realize industrial symbioses. The typical approach is to design and develop industrial parks each of which is aimed to be an industrial symbiosis. This approach is proven by successful cases, but is constrained by land scarce cities as well as the limited types and scales of the companies that can be included in an industrial park. The paper proposes a big data analytics approach to realize industrial symbioses among the industries in a city's close proximity. The waste streams and resource requirements of existing companies are identified and matched with resources needs directly or indirectly through conversion processes. The viability, critical elements and technical challenges of the approach are discussed.

Roll-to-roll (R2R) processing is the process of creating functional films and printed electronic devices, such as printed RFID and printed lighting, by integrating various large area manufacturing processes into a single manufacturing line. It is poised to be a low-cost and efficient manufacturing technology. However, uncertainty and risk exists for the production of specific products in competition with conventional manufacturing approaches. Therefore, a configurable cost and resource consumption model was developed in order to assess the resource effectiveness of the R2R processing line for a specific product design and to identify areas of improvement. The model considers the technical and parametric relationships in terms of cost, manpower, materials, energy consumption and resource requirements. Using the model, hotspots in the manufacturing line were identified and appropriate recommendations were suggested to minimize resource usage and waste, thereby further reducing the cost of manufacturing and enhancing its commercial viability.

Manufacturing companies are increasingly perceived not only on the basis of their products but also of their factories and their embedding within the environment. For this reason, both existing and future factories face the challenges posed by a dynamic and changing market environment. Thus, a gradual change from a throughput to a circular economy leads to the emergence of two categories of factory systems. One category is producing goods, while the second one is recovering and treating waste, residues and the rest of the product at the end of its life. Against this background, this paper introduces the concept of Circulation Factories which combines manufacturing with remanufacturing and recycling into one integrated system. Circulation Factories will enable the realization of an industrial symbiosis transferring waste to value. Drivers and challenges are discussed.

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) encourages a collaborative approach aiming at recovering, reprocessing and reusing non-labour resources and it is a promising solution for mitigating the rising cost of non-labour resource. Introducing IS is a knowledge intensive process and researchers have developed various information and communication (ICT) tools to support the process. However, the use of these tools in the actual industrial practice has not been adequately investigated yet. This study investigates the role that ICT tools play in facilitating the process of creating IS through a case study of International Synergies – the company which facilitated the world’s first national-level IS programme (i.e. NISP UK). Results suggest that the role of digitalisation can increase practitioners’ productivity mainly through data analytics.

The ‘take-make-use-dispose’ pattern of resource consumption resulting from our modern day economy has continuously pushed the limits of the biosphere, which is expected to provide the required natural resources for production and to assimilate the waste at the end of the consumption life cycle. Foreseeably, the biosphere is unable to support the demands imposed by the linear pattern of economic and anthropogenic activities, with symptomatic effects increasingly being felt through various aspects (e.g. climate change, supply chain disruption, natural resource price surges and volatility, waste accumulation, etc.), which ultimately impacts the society. Consequently, advocates for a more sustainable economy began to call for a re-consideration about the organisation of the economy and its associated patterns of resource usage. Accordingly, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation championed the drive towards a Circular Economy, defining its three key principles of: (1) Design out waste and pollution, (2) Keep products and materials in use, (3) Regenerate natural systems. Supporting one of these key principles is the field of Industrial Symbiosis (IS). \ud \ud The concept of IS encompasses the collaborative efforts amongst a network of business entities that inter-connect with each other on the basis that one entity’s unproductive resources are utilised by another as productive resources. IS is particularly pertinent to Singapore as it is one of the promising avenues to tackle waste problems in Singapore. Waste management has been a perennial challenge to Singapore as it relies on a single offshore island for its landfill requirements. To date, official estimates indicate that this landfill site will only sustain operations for another 16 years. IS alleviates the problem by keeping materials within the economy. To this end, the author’s EngD sponsoring company has commissioned efforts in contributing towards the field of IS. In particular, the aims of this research are to: (1) Study the current industrial practice of IS, (2) Study the support tools promoting IS, (3) Develop an assistive tool to augment IS practitioners’ capabilities, contributing towards fostering IS in Singapore’s context. It is envisioned that by leveraging and weaving in “big data” technologies and platform technologies to develop a customised tool, the goal of bringing IS practices – previously absent – to fruition in the geographical context of Singapore can be achieved. \ud \ud This innovation report highlights the key work conducted over the course of the EngD. Firstly, the study of an industrial leader in facilitated IS – International Synergies Limited – was conducted. The practices and methodology were documented, together with the types of knowledge requirements being analysed and characterised. This sets the foundational knowledge required to replicate IS practices in a new context. Secondly, a systematic literature review was conducted to gather all documented tools that promotes the practice of IS. The outcome of this work provides a historical account of tool development efforts pertinent to the field of IS. From the study, the various tool functions and requirements were discussed in relation to the stages of the IS development process. This study also derived insights to the future development trends in the field and provides a probable trajectory of the features of future IS tools. Finally, based on the gaps identified in the previous two studies, a new tool was implemented that addresses the existing knowledge and information gap. The tool comprises a natural language processing based algorithm which processes raw knowledge sources (e.g. journal articles and patent documents) to extract relational information that can be utilised to assist in the IS matching process. The tool also aims to increase productivity in constructing knowledge bases that is required by the field of IS for recommending matches. \ud \ud A key learning point derived from the set of work undertaken is that while moving towards developing more sophisticated support tools to assist in IS facilitation, one must not lose sight of the larger scope of knowledge requirements to successfully execute a facilitated IS initiative. Adoption of IS requires capabilities that go beyond developing and acquiring the latest enabling technologies, and also includes the capacity building of the more tacit aspect of enabling knowledge, know-hows, acumen and the human touch to gain the required legitimacy and buy-ins from stakeholders for the delivery of an IS programme. Ultimately, by aiming to blur the line differentiating wastes from resources, a higher level of sustainability can be reached through smarter use of resources.\ud