By: Bruce Brown
Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) are somewhat difficult to define because they are almost infinitely variable in their design.
However, it is generally accepted that an eco-industrial park is:
By working together, this community seeks a collective benefit that is greater than the sum of the individual benefits that each company would realize if it optimized its individual performance only.
The goal of an EIP is to improve economic performance of the participating companies while minimizing their environmental impact. They are the industrial epitomization of the yard sale credo - "One person's trash is another's treasure."
Why appealing?
The challenge of reconciling the demands for business and environmental excellence is a strong attraction. It is common for two or more companies to develop mutually advantageous relationships where the waste products of one form a valued input to another. For example, one Nestles plant in New York turned toxic chocolate oil into an input for cosmetic manufacture.
Current Status
There is growing excitement in North America about EIPs. They are increasingly seen as an important element in any sustainable development strategy. Yet for the most part they remain an intriguing prospect on the drawing board. No community in the United States has what can be called a functioning EIP. There are but a few examples worldwide, the most famous being in Kalundborg, Denmark. We will discuss current developments in more detail near the end of the article.
Design Principles
Consensus on a set of design principles is evolving in North America. It is important to realize that the foremost example of an EIP - Kalundborg, according to one of the participants - was not designed at all, it evolved over time.
All EIPs in the U.S. and Canada use an industrial ecology framework to shape their development.
Industrial Ecology
Industrial ecology models industrial systems after ecological systems. In natural systems, very little is wasted. Plants transform water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight into sugars, and these sugars are broken down by other species. Over time, and extraordinarily efficient system of nutrient cycling has developed. Nature is the expert. Wastes are used primarily as energy sources. Whatever is not used is stored.
At the most basic level, industrial ecology describes a system were one industry's waste outputs become another's raw materials (inputs). Within this closed loop, fewer materials would be wasted. Many industries have long had symbiotic relationships, where wastes and materials are transformed internally or by others. For example, metal industries have long used scrap materials in the production process.
There are some important differences between nature and industry. Industry is subject to:
Brownfield Redevelopment
Brownfields are abandoned, usually urban, s\ites with actual or perceived contamination. These constitute an enormous problem in Canada and the U.S. These sites are often not redeveloped because prospective buyers and lenders are wary of the liability associated with ownership of contaminated property. This drives developers to greenfield projects, which enhances urban sprawl, diminishes natural resources, and leaves the community with obsolete properties.
EIPs are an appealing redevelopment option for Brownfield sites because they offer the community sustainability, economic growth, and lower environmental impact than traditional industry.
Business Development
Research done at Cornell University in New York State suggests that at a minimum EIP companies can operate at 20-30 per cent above industry averages on Return on Assets. This is achievable, especially in resource intensive industries, by reducing input and disposal costs, higher efficiencies due to the focus of the workforce on achieving environment excellence, and through networked collaboration in areas such as maintenance, training, and environmental reporting.
New Technologies
Information Technologies
New information technologies such as the World Wide Web will be invaluable to EIPs. Access to information can assist park participants in developing possible supplier/customer relationships for by-products. It can also assist in marketing efforts external to the actual park.
Water
Reuse of water offers a substantial benefit to participants in an EIP. Because many firms use large amounts of water in manufacturing, collaborative efforts can reduce the need for water and minimize the amount of effluents entering water treatment systems and the ecosystem.
Recovery, Recycling, Reuse, and Substitution
Much of the attention around environmental technologies for EIPs swirls around the development of new processes for reusing wastes and by-products. Central to an EIP's is its ability to exchange wastes for other uses.
Environmental Monitoring
As the regulatory system continues to evolve with new government initiatives, effective environmental monitoring technologies will be essential. Monitoring technologies will provide information to regulators and the public about industrial performance, and to a certain extent alleviate some of the problems that could arise from joint-permitting. Finally, monitoring technologies are the tool by which EIP participants and others can judge how well the EIP's environmental programs are working.
Transportation
The transportation sector is a major contributor to a number of environmental problems including non-point source pollution and air emissions, such as greenhouse gases. New means of moving people and goods throughout and beyond an EIP will be essential to lowering the overall environmental impact of an EIP. Examples might include using clean burning alternative fuel vehicles, electric vehicles, or the application of sophisticated logistics management systems such as just-in-time delivery of goods and services.
Energy
Beyond recycling and reuse technologies, energy technologies seem to receive the most attention in discussions of EIP's. Three energy technologies seem most appropriate for EIPs: cogeneration systems, energy recovery processes, and alternative sources.
COGENERATION
Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of power and useful thermal energy from a single fuel-consuming process. In the vast majority of applications, the power generated is in the form of electricity and the useful thermal energy is in the form of steam.
What is Cogeneration?
Cogeneration is not a matter of the basic differences in the boilers, turbines, and heat exchangers that are part of the cycle. It is a matter of the design of cycles and their piping and valving systems.
Many different kinds of fuel can be used: coal, natural gas, wood waste, black liquor. Fuel can be burned in many different ways: spray guns, burners, fluidized beds, grates, etc.
The fuel can be burned in a boiler, gas turbine, diesel engine, or in a spark-ignition natural gas engine.
Type of Cogeneration
There are many types and arrangements of cogeneration cycles, and any of them could be applied to an eco-industrial park. We will briefly describe the main types.
Steam Turbines
The boiler burns fuel to generate steam which drives the turbine and generator.
The steam turbine can either exhaust to a condenser or the exhaust can be used in a process.
In a typical steam turbine cogeneration cycle, steam is extracted from the turbine in two or more places at different pressures. This steam can be controlled with valves, or left uncontrolled to vary with the steam flow through the turbine.
One of the main applications of the steam turbine condensing cycle is in electricity-generating power plants. This is a similar cycle to that used by Ontario Hydro in its Lakeview, Lambton, Nanticoke and Lennox fossil fuel fired generating stations. A reheat cycle is used to improve the efficiency and reduce the moisture level in the steam as it reachs the back end of the turbine. This is a regenerative cycle with seven stages of feedwater heating. This improves cycle efficiency by raising the average temperature of heat addition to the cycle. The accompanying seven turbine steam extraction points give a wide range of available take off points for supply of steam to a process. Extraction steam pressures vary from over 700 psig to below atmospheric.
In EIP application, steam can be supplied from the steam turbine central station to various process and heating loads. This is an excellent retrofit which can make an EIP site more viable. Large central stations can be good partners in EIPs. They can provide an abundant supply of cheap steam at a variety of pressures. Examples include Nanticoke G.S. and the EIP at Kalundborg.
Fig. 1 shows a central station steam cycle where steam is extracted from the steam turbine for process use. This is a non-condensing steam turbine with 66.9 MW gross electrical output.
Considerable make-up water is needed since not all the process steam is returned to the cycle.
Gas Turbines
The compressor of the gas turbine compresses air. This is mixed with fuel in the combustor and burned. The resulting energy drives the turbine/compressor combination. The gas turbine exhaust heat is used to generate steam in a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). Sometimes the HRSG is equipped with an auxiliary burner so steam can be generated when the gas turbine is unavailable. This cycle is not as attractive as others for an EIP.
Combines Cycle
The name combined cycle arises because it combines a gas turbine with steam turbine. There are many different cycle designs, but commonly a gas turbine exhausts to a heat recovery steam generator as in the gas turbine cycle. The steam from the HRSG is reduced in pressure in a back-pressure steam turbine. Process steam is extracted from the turbine at the appropriate stages. Both turbines drive a generator to produce electricity.
The heat recovery steam generator may have an auxiliary burner. When the steam cycle must always operate, an auxiliary burner is insurance for times when the gas turbine is down. It can also be used to control steam temperature leaving the HRSG. Auxiliary burners can more than double the output from the steam turbine. They are better than a separate auxiliary boiler because the dry gas loss is reduced. HRSGs are becoming larger and more complex and some resemble the large fossil-fuel fired central station steam generators.
The gas turbine combined cycle is the most efficient of the above cycles and a common cogeneration installation. The cycle supplies a lot of electric power per unit of steam heat and is thus an economical cogeneration cycle.
Fig. 2 is a sample line diagram of a combined cycle.
Diesel engines
The use of diesel engines in combined cycle applications is increasing. The diesel engine has the highest efficiency of any power production prime mover. Diesels are the first building block in a highly efficient combined cycle system that relies on the hot gas and oxygen in the diesel's exhaust to burn natural gas, light distilled oil, heavy oil, or coal in a boiler. Diesel combined cycles require supplementary firing to generate appropriate steam conditions.
One of the main advantages diesel engines have over gas turbines is their ability to burn a wide range of fuels.
Because of the availability of cheap natural gas, the use of natural gas engines operating on the diesel cycle in increasing. They are used in both simple and combined cycles.
Heat recovery options include use of hot water from the engine cooling, heat from the engine exhaust in an exhaust gas boiler, turbo charger intercoller heat, radiation heat and condensing economizer.
These could possibly find application in some EIPs. Wartsila Diesel is developing a 72 MW natural gas fired diesel engine, so there is considerable overlap in size with the gas turbine.
Cogeneration Applications
Supply of steam from a central generating station to district heating systems is a common arrangement in Europe. For example, Helsinki, Finland uses coal fired plants to supply heat to industrial, commercial, and residential buildings.
Cogeneration-based EIPs would use extraction steam as a supply to a variety of industries located near the station.
Examples include the Bruce Energy Center on Lake Huron. Here extraction steam from Bruce A NGS is supplied to adjacent industries. There are currently 6 industries and Ontario Hydro and BEC have signed an agreement for Hydro to supply steam for 25 years.
Lennox TGS near Kingston would be another high-potential location. There is excess steam and a large tract of land available next to the station.
Specific industries can also locate next to the station. For example, Atikokan TGS supplies steam to a local forest products industries.
There are many combined cycle cogeneration applications. Transalta operates a plant at Toronto's Pearson International Airport to supply McDonnell Douglas with process steam and generate up to 110 MW of electricity which Ontario Hydro purchases.
This plant is very efficient, mainly because it is designed for very low stack gas exit temperatures.
The Health Sciences Center power plant in Ottawa is similar to the Toronto one, but somewhat smaller.
Advantages of Cogeneration
Cogeneration cycles use more of the energy available from the fuel. The cycle minimizes or eliminates the energy loss that occurs in the steam turbine condenser and the exhaust gas losses from the boiler. This results in cheaper electric power and the industry may be able to sell excess to utility to generate revenue. In any case, self-generation of electricity will avoid the cost of buying power from the utility. With two potential sources of electricity, reliability should be increased.
Process design and operation are flexible, the proportions of electric and thermal power can be varied over a wide range.
In an EIP application, the flexibility afforded by electrical generation and process heat generation are of great benefit. The overall efficiency is much greater and the environmental impact per unit of energy is much less.
Cogeneration Criteria
Since the cycle produces power and heat simultaneously, there must be a simultaneous need for both. A heat load should be available for about 85 per cent of the heat available.
Absorption chillers are frequently used for summer loads. These use steam heat in the chilling cycle. One must be able to justify the capital investment ( ie. reasonable pay-back time).
The greatest potential for cogeneration is in pulp and paper, textiles, food processing, chemical plants, large commercial and multi-unit residential buildings.
Further Considerations
UTILITY ISLAND
The utility island is a central area which receives all the inputs to the EIP and from which is distributed the services. Inputs could include wastes, biomass, fuel such as natural gas, water, electricity.
In our concept, a cogeneration facility is the cornerstone of the utility island. Using natural gas as fuel, the cogeneration unit(s) would supply electricity, steam, and if required hot water and cold water to the industries in the park.
If cogeneration is not installed but natural gas is available, the current trend is for each industry to use direct-fired equipment supplied by plant-wide gas piping systems. This makes it more difficult to adapt to cogeneration later. Also it means there is no practical alternative to natural gas as fuel, whereas the cogeneration facility can be designed to accommodate a wide range of fuels.
Fuel can be purchased on more favorable terms when the purchaser is buying large quantities for the park's industries. The cogeneration facility would normally be designed for dual fuel, so that there is an alternative to natural gas if the price rises too high. An appropriate formula for sharing the cogeneration benefit between the steam users and the cogeneration plant owners is essential.
Services provided from the utility island include:
There are advantages of buying material in bulk which can be utilized. Also centralizing purchasing, maintenance, training, and other services can afford a cost savings.
Highly toxic materials including dangerous gases such as chlorine, or liquids such as concentrated acids, can be more easily and safely contained in a central area and piped to their point of use.
The utility island concept is the key to the efficient distribution of many common process materials. Unless the utility island concept is used, at least in a low level manner, it is practically impossible to distribute efficiently the primary adjunct materials such as water, air, and industrial gases.
The utility island concept is already under way in some form in most industrial parks, although it may not be called or recognized as such. What is necessary in most cases is to develop it further into a full-scale distribution, maintenance, repair, etc. center.
District Energy
District energy is a term that encompasses space heating, domestic hot water, and cooling needs of residential, institutional, commercial, and industrial building and energy users. In district energy systems, thermal energy - in the form of hot water, steam, or chilled water - is distributed by underground pipelines from central plants to individual buildings.
Hot water district heating offers many advantages over steam. It can be piped over a greater distance - up to 110 km. The piping is cheaper; when used with cogeneration less electrical energy is sacrificed; there is a good match between energy and end-use; and less heat loss. Steam has its place - there are no pumps required, high-pressure steam energy can be provided, and it can be used for winter humidification.
District heating (DH) is a very popular application of cogeneration in Europe. Finland is one of the world's leading proponents of district heating. District heating accounts for about 45 per cent of Finland's heating market. More than 40 per cent of the population live in homes heated by district heat. The majority of the country's public buildings are also connected to the DH system. DH has a market share of over 80 per cent in Finland's largest cities. Helsinki has a share of over 90 per cent, the highest in western Europe.
Canada is well behind many other countries in awareness and application of district energy technologies. With abundant fossil fuel and hydroelectric resources, Canada has historically not had strong incentives to seek out more efficient energy systems. However, district energy is now being looked at more closely in Canada.
There are several examples in Canada, such as the Health Sciences Center in Ottawa, where steam, hot water, and cold water (from an absorption chiller) is supplied to a nearby cluster of hospitals and other facilities.
Benefits
The benefits of district energy systems are:
Improved Energy Efficiency
District energy systems can use available energy resources, including fossil fuels, biomass, and waste heat from electrical generation and industrial process
Improved Environmental Impact
Reduced Costs
Heat Sharing
Heat rejected by one process can be used in another. There is much more scope for this in a multi plant complex than in a single plant. If the heat is in the form of hot or warm air the first step is to determine whether or not the air can be used directly. A common example is the use of air exhausted from a process or working area as combustion air. In some situations where heat losses from machinery or equipment require exhausting warm air, the same air can be used to supply an area (perhaps a warehouse) requiring heating in winter.
If the heat is in the form of either a gas or a liquid that cannot be used directly, a heat exchanger can be used to transfer it to a suitable fluid to be used in another process or to a heat transport system such as a water/glycol loop, a water circuit (possibly district heating) or a Dowtherm or Therminol loop.
A variety of special heat exchangers have been developed to extract heat from fluids that tend to plug heat exchangers. In many cases, corrosion resistant materials must be used. Heat exchangers can be used only where heat use is at a temperature lower than that of the reject heat.
If the temperature at which the heat can be used is slightly higher than that of the reject heat, heat pumps can be used. These use the same equipment as do air conditioners and chillers which extract heat from the reject heat stream and deliver it at a higher temperature. They can use either electrical or thermal energy. The more the temperature must be increased the more energy is required. In the Scandinavian countries heat pumps are used to extract heat from pulp and paper mill effluent and add it to district heat systems.
Material Sharing
Waste materials from one plant in the park can in many cases be used either within the park as an input to another plant or as fuel. Some sludges can be used to make compost, for example. If a use cannot be found within the park it may be found elsewhere. Waste paper, for example, is shipped hundreds of miles from the urban forest to a deinking system to be recycled into paper.
Occasionally two different operations can adjust to a common raw material, thereby simplifying any ultimate disposal problem. Also, raw materials that are difficult to biodegrade in a treatment system can often be substituted for a more biodegradable alternative. The same goes for materials that are more prone to producing air emissions. Less volatile or dust-prone material might be substituted. Finally, highly toxic materials such as dangerous gases like chlorine, or liquids like concentrated acids, can be much more easily contained in a central area and piped to their point of use. Any accidental releases can be more easily controlled, contained or neutralized centrally.
Some expertise about processes or manufacturing techniques can minimize the negative impact of an industrial park on its neighbors. While this may seem to an idealized situation, it may be sufficient to point out these effects to the park client and have them come up with their own solution. After all, the company is the one most likely to have the necessary expertise. Most companies want to maintain a good public image, and this can be done by some careful planning.
The idea of using the "cast-offs" from one process as raw material for another product is not new. The pulp and paper industry has probably reached the highest level of refinement of this concept by using the entire tree, beginning with the bark and sawdust for energy, or even, in some cases, a product such as garden cover or mulch. Screen rejects are used in a number of products, such as low-grade paperboard, or building paper or board.
The ingenuity and intuitiveness of people determine the success of such ventures. However, in attempting to translate this idea to a large industrial park complex one is obviously going to run into severe logistical and intercompany problems. The whole idea of another company benefitting from their rejected material is difficult for some company's management to resolve. This is where the park management must play a very important role if the idea is to be a success. In most cases the park management is mainly interested in two things: more clients and fewer problems. Fortunately the two generally go together in this concept.
Occasionally it is necessary to modify a waste material to make it useable for another purpose. For example, gases from power boilers not only contain useable heat (for hot water) but also certain amounts of sulphur gases and fly ash. Conversion of the sulphur gases to calcium sulphate in a lime scrubber can reduce emissions and provide a useful raw material for wallboard and other similar products. Using high-sulphur fuels can both reduce costs and increase the amount of material available. Also, disposal of used lubrication oils is another problem which can be alleviated by using it as a fuel supplement. Typically, used lube oils contain a significant amount of sulphur which will increase the sulphur content of the off-gases thereby providing additional calcium sulphate.
The above is probably the easiest and most obvious solution to several problems. More exotic waste materials may require a higher level of technology. Agricultural waste can either be composted and sold as an agricultural supplement, or decomposed in an anaerobic reactor to produced methane and other combustible gases. These can either be combusted or used as in a diesel-type engine to produce electricity.
Water Use and Recycling
Water is a shareable, reusable commodity the same as energy, which can be used until it is unusable, much as heat loses its value as its temperature drops. Water becomes unusable when it becomes so contaminated that it is impractical or too expensive to upgrade it. Technology exists to clean up practically any contaminated water, no matter how bad it is. Water is the nearest thing to energy in terms of a universally-used material.
There are many examples of recycling based on sharing water systems.
This group trades and makes use of waste streams and energy resources, and turn by-products into raw materials.
The power plant is a cogeneration facility that sells steam to the town for district heating and heats its own fish farm. The plant also sells steam to Statoil and Novo Nordisk, gypsum from its SO2 scrubber to Gyproc, and fly ash to construction firms.
Statoil refinery sells its flare gas as fuel to Aesnes and Gyproc instead of burning it off and sells its cooling water to Aesnes thereby reducing the power plant's fresh water requirements, and sells pure sulphur from its desulphurization plant to a sulphuric acid maker.
Novo Nordisk treats its byproduct or organic sludge and distributes it to local farmers as a fertilizer supplement.
Gyproc makes plasterboard from the power plant's gypsum and flue gas from the refinery.
Kalundborg has been described as a cooperation among different industries by which the presence of each increases the viability of the others and by which the demands of society for resource savings and environmental protection are considered.
This industrial symbiosis developed gradually and without a grand design over the past 27 years as the firms sought to make economic use of their by-products and to minimize the cost of compliance with new, ever-stricter governmental regulations.
The Kalundborg system was not a conscious application of the principles of industrial ecology, but was based on creative business sense and deep-seated environmental awareness.
Chronology of Development
Significant milestones in the development of Kalundborg are:
1959 Aesnes Power Station commissioned
1961 Statoil Refinery established
1972 Gryroc firm established
1976 Novo Nordisk starts delivery of sludge by truck to farmers
1979 Aesnes starts to supply fly ash to cement producers
1981 Aesnes starts supplying heat to Kalundborg
1982 Aesnes delivers process steam to Statoil and Novo Nordisk
1987 Statoil supplies cooling water to Aesnes
1991 Statoil supplies waste water to Aesnes
1992 Statoil supplies fuel gas to Aesnes
1993 Aesnes commissions scrubber and supplies gypsum to Gyproc
The initial links tended to involve the sale of waste products without any significant pretreatment. This includes Statoil's fuel gas, Aesnes' fly ash, clinker, waste heat, and process steam, and the cooling water to the fish ponds. These arrangements were based on a re-routing of what used to be waste, without the need to alter the byproducts to any significant extent.
The more recent links have tended to be based on an application of pollution control technologies. These links, which account for over half the symbiotic arrangements, do not simply move regular process byproducts around, but alter the disposal processes and practices to make them more environmentally benign. It was community and regulatory pressure to eliminate thermal pollution of the fjord that was a major impetus for Aesnes' use of the oil refinery's cooling water. Changes in water pollution regulations made the treatment and distribution of Novo Nordisk's sludge the least-cost disposal alternative. Scrubbing for SO2 by the power plant and desulphurization at the refinery turned previous pollution into fuel gas, sulphur, and gypsum.
Benefits achieved
There are four types of tangible benefits from the arrangements at Kalundborg:
To quantify these benefits:
Requirements and Lessons Learned
Kalundborg has provided many lessons for eco-industrial park development.
The industries must fit together.
At Kalundborg, Aesnes and Statoil produce energy in the form of heat, steam, and fuel gas, while all participants consume energy in various forms. Linkages like this exists all over Canada - we shall look at a few examples later.
Many of these processes are in use in Ontario, but not all at the same location. Ontario Hydro sells its ash from the Nanticoke coal burning station to Michigan, Toronto has district heating supplied from a fossil-fired steam plant, Ontario Hydro's Lambton G. S. sells gypsum from its scrubbers.
The industries must be geographically close.
This is more true of some linkages than others. Certainly in the case of pipelines for steam or hot water the cost and the effectiveness are both affected by the distance. Steam can only be effectively transmitted up to 2 km and hot water up to 30 km. Transportation cost of materials is another consideration, however this has to be related to alternative costs. Gyproc's supply of virgin gypsum comes from 4000 km away.
This may not be as much of a requirement as it used to be. There is increasing interest in the concept of virtual eco-industrial parks where the industries are not close together but still share resources.
The mental distance between the participants must be short.
This may be the most important requirement of all. Openness, communication, understanding, and trust are necessary among the firms involved. Kalundborg's small size and relative isolation have been important elements in bringing this about. The fact that the four firms are planted in the same interconnected society in which their employees live make inter-firm cooperation more readily achievable.
Both cultural and regulatory pressures encourage environmental awareness.
The Kalundborg firms are headed by people who as managers are profit-seekers, but as individuals are environmentalists. The Danish regulatory framework encourages the sort of evolution that occurred at Kalundborg. A cooperative relationship is fostered between government and the regulated industries, and as a result, firms focus their energies on finding creative ways to reduce environmental impact, instead of fighting the regulators.
Issues
There are a number of salient issues from Kalundborg that are relevant to the development of such arrangements elsewhere.
Decision-maker's attitudes
Who in companies supports the symbiotic arrangements? Who makes the decisions? Who are opposed and why?
At Kalundborg, no one was apparently opposed to the linkages because they were making money. In this way they were just like any other business decision.
Kalundborg city has required all its residents to use the piping for district heating. There was some opposition to this, but all have now complied.
Regulatory scarcity
Fresh water is scarce at Kalundborg. This scarcity is felt by the participants as a direct cost, and this has inspired water reuse schemes. The 1970's oil crisis inspired the local government to invest in the infrastructure required for district heating.
Regulatory role
Regulation has played a major role in inspiring linkages and forcing the use of pollution control technologies which made linkages possible. One of the participants in Kalundborg says: "Economics alone will bring you a certain amount of symbiosis. To go further you need political impetus - to require certain pollution control technologies and/or to adjust prices to make symbiotic arrangements economically viable".
System robustness
How robust is the system to disruptions? Are there stand-bys and at what cost?
This applies particularly to steam supply and to electricity supply. Some processes can tolerate interruptions better than others. In some industries a loss of heat is intolerable. The cost of having a back-up supply must be considered.
Market effectiveness
How do the market prices of alternatives compare to the cost of symbiotic arrangements?
Each link must be economically viable aside from environmental consideration, so the market prices of alternatives and virgin materials must be consistently higher than the cost of symbiotic arrangements.
North American Activities
U.S.A.
In 1994, the President's Council on Sustainable Development designated four communities as demonstration sites for eco-industrial parks:
Baltimore, Maryland
Cape Charles, Virginia
Brownsville, Texas
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Brownsville
We will look at the Brownsville, Texas site as an example of EIP activity in the U.S.A.
The Brownsville EIP also encompasses Matamoros, Mexico, a "sister city" just across the border. Planners here are considering a virtual EIP in which industries which are not necessarily close would be linked through waste exchanges.
The following companies were willing to participate in the study, providing information about their inputs and outputs, the potential for replacing virgin material with recycled material, and the potential for marketing by-products currently classified as waste.
The study also targeted several companies located off site. These companies represented "remote partners" in the study and include:
a discrete-parts manufacturer that produces plastic and metal parts using screw machines, automated roll-feed punch
a discrete-parts manufacturer that produces plastic and metal parts using screw machines, automated roll-feed punch presses, and injection molding.
Once the members had been identified, the study focused on five scenarios, beginning with the baseline scenario and progressing to a comprehensive EIP. We will look only at the baseline and the final scenarios.
The baseline scenario shows only two symbolic relationships between the companies in the EIP: the refinery sells its residual oil to the asphalt company, and the limestone company sells limestone to the asphalt company. The relationships are shown in Fig. 5
In the fifth and final scenario, shown in Fig. 6, a power plant burning Orimulsion has been added, and the symbiotic links among member companies are tightened through relocation of remote members to the port EIP.
The economic benefit of the Brownsville EIP under the last three scenarios is shown in Table 1.
In 1995, Brownsville received a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce for a feasibility study on the proposed EIP.
CANADA
Burnside
Canadians have been working in the forefront of EIP development since 1992. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from three universities in Halifax, led by Ray Cote of Dalhousie University, has been developing a research facility at Burnside Industrial Park. Burnside is one of Canada's largest and most diverse parks. It has approximately 1300 businesses and 18,000 employees. It has hundreds of sectors, but also considerable redundancy within sectors. This is an essential ecological feature. Burnside has many of the features of a complex but relatively immature ecosystem, making it an ideal laboratory for research in industrial ecology.
The project management team has been investing principles, guidelines, strategies, and support systems which would assist in establishing and operating industrial parks as ecosystems.
ECO-INDUSTRIAL PARKS:
FUTURE PROSPECTS
Canadian Potential Sites
A recent study done by ThermoShare, Inc. identifies more than 40 potential Canadian sites for EIPs based on cogeneration. There were 9 high priority sites identified.
We will look in more detail at two of the sites:
Algoma Steel is the major employer and the major energy user in the city. St. Mary's Paper mill has about 400 employees. Their electricity is purchased from Great Lakes Power and they purchase steam from Lake Superior Power's combined cycle cogeneration plant which became operational late in 1993.
The city has designated the area comprising St. Mary's Paper, Algoma Steel, Lake Superior Power, and a large area to the west as the Gateway Industry Center. The area is fully serviced with sanitary sewer, water mains, 115kV electricity, natural gas, port facilities, and heavy truck routes. Land prices are competitive and there are vacant industrial buildings available for lease or purchase. It should be noted also that there is a new Georgia-Pacific Flakeboard plant located adjacent to Algoma Steel property.
The City of Nanticoke is located on the north shore of Lake Erie, about 130 km southwest of Toronto. The area is one of the prime areas in Ontario for an eco-industrial park. It has a deep water port, proximity to a steam supply, natural gas, and electricity. Ontario Hydro's Nanticoke Generating Station produces large quantities of high-pressure steam which could be used by existing and future industries. The economic development climate is very favorable for industrial development. There is land available for future industrial expansion.
It is an ideal area for consideration, because of the presence of three world-class industrial installations. The Stelco integrated steel mill is a state of the art facility, as is the Imperial Oil refinery. Ontario Hydro's Nanticoke Generating station is the utility's largest fossil-fuel station and one of the largest in the world with an output of 4000 mW. There is also a good deep water port. The three large facilities are all within about 5 km of each other. There are large quantities of energy processed by all three Facilities, with large potential for synergistic use.
EIP Challenges
Developing a successful EIP presents challenges to each of the EIP stakeholders.
Challenges to local government include the following:
Potential EIP members face the following challenges
Local, provincial, and federal regulatory agencies are challenged to
The challenges to EIP managers include the following
Conclusion
Eco-industrial parks are a solution to many of today's environmental problems as well as being a cost-effective way to do business. Canada can learn from the work going on here, in the U.S.A. and Europe. It behooves us to keep abreast of developments and work to develop EIPs. They are a concept whose time has come.
Bruce Brown is with Thermoshare, Inc. He presented this paper at the Canadian Electricity Forum's Developing Independent Power Projects Forum in Toronto
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