Zero carbon manufacturing facility — towards integrating material, energy, and waste process flows

Abstract

The increasing pressure on material availability, energy prices as well as emerging environmental legislation is leading manufacturers to adopt solutions to reduce their material and energy consumption as well as their carbon footprint, thereby becoming more sustainable. Ultimately manufacturers could potentially become zero carbon by having zero net energy demand and zero waste across the supply chain. Literature on zero carbon manufacturing, and the technologies that underpin it, is growing but there is little available on how a manufacturer undertakes the transition. Additionally, the work in this area is fragmented and clustered around technologies rather than around processes that link the technologies together. There is a need to better understand material, energy and waste process flows in a manufacturing facility from a holistic viewpoint. With knowledge of the potential flows, design methodologies can be developed to enable zero carbon manufacturing facility creation. This paper explores the challenges faced when attempting to design a zero carbon manufacturing facility. A broad scope is adopted from legislation to technology and from low waste to consuming waste. A generic material, energy and waste flow model is developed and presented to show the material, energy and waste inputs and outputs for the manufacturing system and the supporting facility and, importantly, how they can potentially interact. Finally the application of the flow model in industrial applications is demonstrated to select appropriate technologies and configure them in an integrated way.

Sustainability in manufacturing and factories of the future

“…2(d). 41,42 By including such energy and media backflows, interactions between the respective partial systems can be made transparent revealing for instance appropriate adjustments when it comes to aligning certain conditioning activities such as defined temperature, pressure and purity. 43 Besides that, potential interactions regarding new, alternative input and output flows between (sub)systems can be observed, considering traditional waste flows of one system or process as an input for another.…”

“…43 Besides that, potential interactions regarding new, alternative input and output flows between (sub)systems can be observed, considering traditional waste flows of one system or process as an input for another. 41,42 This perspective applies for a single factory as well as a representation of a manufacturing ecosystem alike.…”

Sustainable Rent-Based Closed-Loop Supply Chain for Fashion Products

“…Smith and Ball [44] developed guidelines for material, energy-and-waste process flow modelling to support the pursuit of sustainable manufacturing. In the context of sustainable manufacturing, Ball et al [45] examined the concept of zero carbon manufacturing as a constituent element of sustainable manufacturing, which focused on the tactical and operational levels of an organization. Zero carbon manufacturing takes the perspective of the manufacturer and seeks to improve the environmental performance of their system by understanding the process flows within it.…”

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“…For conventional engine structure, specific fuel consumption can be reduced through cycle parameter optimization, aerodynamic improvement and design improvement of combustors. The United States and European countries initiated various programs for developing efficient and environment-friendly engine technologies [4]. They are working on GTF engines, open rotor engines, more-electricity engines, pulse detonation engines and other new engine architectures.…”