Collaboration platform for enabling industrial symbiosis: Application of the industrial-symbiosis life cycle analysis engine

Abstract

Environmental benefits and trade-offs of industrial symbiosis (IS) must be quantified through life cycle assessment (LCA) to transparently benchmark how open and closed-loop recycling exchanges contribute to the circular economy transition. Collaboration platforms for enabling IS that exist or are under development can be enhanced through this performance evaluation capability. This paper aims to address the analytical gap by introducing the Industrial Symbiosis-Life Cycle Analysis (IS-LCA) Engine designed to assess the environmental performance of IS. The IS-LCA Engine uses a process-based matrix model to conduct LCAs of waste-to-resource exchanges within an IS network. Users of the IS-LCA Engine are able to view the LCA results at several different levels of interest: (i) the whole network; (ii) individual participating entities; (iii) and specific resource flows. Through a simplified case study, we discuss and demonstrate how the model can be manipulated to evaluate the carbon dioxide emissions from the perspectives of the entire network and its individual entities. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license