S10.1 - Water circular economy at Kwinana Industries, Western Australia – World's best practice industrial symbiosis

“Industrial symbiosis engages diverse organisations in a network to foster eco-innovation and long-term culture change. Creating and sharing knowledge through the network yields mutually profitable transactions for novel sourcing of required inputs, value-added destinations for non-product outputs, and improved business and technical processes.” Lombardi, D. R. and Laybourn, P. (2012) The Western Trade Coast (WTC) is a major industrial zone of Western Australia that is well documented for its industrial symbiosis towards closing cycles across water, energy and materials. WTC has four industrial suburbs: Australian Marine Complex (AMC), Kwinana Industrial Area (KIA - core heavy), Rockingham Industry Zone (RIZ) and Latitude 32. WTC has 30,000 workers and makes an economic contribution to the State of WA of around $16Bn pa. The WTC is about 6,000ha in area, only 2,000 ha are developed. There is a world class buffer zone surrounding the WTC. WTC, and primarily the Kwinana industrial core, is the world’s best practice example of industrial symbiosis at work. The synergy exchanges between the different companies were mapped in 2013 (Western Trade Coast Integrated Assessment 2014 report) and was the fourth in a series of 5-6 yearly reports. Alongside these reports were many years of research compiling this information. These synergies and the overall industrial symbiosis of 2013 are being updated to reflect current status in 2020 and to take account of growth expected in coming years, particularly new battery industries entering the KIA. There are 4 synergy dimensions being mapped: 1. Product and by-product synergy (with water as the primary focus of the study) 2. Skilled workforce synergy 3. Support industry synergy 4. Governance synergy Each of these are being explored in the new synergy mapping exercise as part of a university engineering education work experience program. The mapping will include products that either leave WA (exported (road/rail/ship) or sent to the regions (by road or rail) out beyond the WTC. The main output of this study, to be presented, is an interactive visual digital platform for use by the KIC members to document their circular economy exchanges online and to be able to identify and negotiate new exchanges on a commercial basis.

Speaker

Chris Oughton

S10.2 - Circular economy solutions in Iceland (working title)

Circular economy solutions reuse and upcycle waste streams in order to minimize the use of resources and mitigate the creation of waste and emissions. Accordingly, circular economy solutions are an essential tool to tackle the imminent challenges of depleting resources and the emerging environmental crisis. In this presentation, we explore the circular solutions for resource recovery in waste streams in a country with one of the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Human Development Index (HDI) in Europe, Iceland. The economy of Iceland is mainly based on renewable energy, fishery, farming, metallurgy, and tourism. To assess the benefits of circular economy solutions we examine four relevant case studies from the following industrial sectors in Iceland: i) a geothermal energy plant, ii) fisheries, iii) domestic waste processing and iv) aluminium production. By describing the processes, the opportunities and the market potential of the circular economy solutions in the four case studies we identify the superiority of circular recovery of resources in a modern society. The results reveal that the recovery of resources reduces the environmental impacts, increases the economic output and enhances the resilience of the local economy. While our results are based on the examples in Iceland the described processes of resource recovery can be applied in any other country with similar resources. We conclude that the presented circular solutions could lead to a more sustainable world while preserving vital resources for the next generations.

Speaker

David Christian Finger - Prof. Dr. - Reykjavik University, Sustainability Institute and Forum

S10.3 - Potential nutrient conversion using nature-based solutions in cities and utilization concepts to create a circular urban food system

The present-day food system is characterised by a one-directional flow of resources from rural areas into cities, where most of the food is consumed and organic material consequently wasted. The major share of essential macronutrients for agriculture is provided as chemical fertilizer that relies on limited resources (e.g. phosphorus) and produces a large climate footprint. Finally, the nutrients contained in the consumed food are discharged via urban sanitation systems and treated with a significant consumption of energy. The nutrients are discharged to the environment and lost to potential reuse. This gives cities a crucial role in promoting the circular economy, including circular water and nutrient management in the urban-agricultural food system. Alongside end-of-pipe technologies recovering nitrogen and phosphorus at conventional wastewater treatment plants, nature-based solutions (NBS) provide a robust and low-energy alternative to produce irrigation water and nutrients from urban wastewater for safe reuse in agriculture. This paper aims to identify the potential contribution of processes utilizing NBS in order to close water and nutrient cycles in the urban-agricultural system, leading to a circular food and non-food bioeconomy. In particular, a Substance Flow Analysis (SFA) approach is used to assess water sources and nutrients that could be recovered and reused in cities using NBS. Firstly, this study assesses the reuse potential to cover production of major food groups (vegetables, staples, meat and fish) as well as the non-food biomass that could be additionally produced. The resource conversion model was developed on a conversion basis, i.e. the urban nutrient budget based on population, and a holistic utilization concept of all available secondary nutrients and required secondary water by using the central European city of Vienna as an example. The developed model includes household water and nutrient discharge, the metabolization of water and nutrients in NBS-treatment processes as demonstrated by the EU-funded HOUSEFUL project, specific crop nutrient requirements and yields for different crops, as well as greenhouse versus outdoor farming conditions in the temperate central European climate zone. Results indicate that by applying NBS, secondary resources can cover the nutrient requirements of all vegetables produced within the municipality, with significant excess to be returned to peri-urban and rural agriculture or to be used for non-food biomass production. Finally, the model can inform the selection and design of nature-based treatment technologies to optimize nutrient metabolization and thereby the N, P, K availability in secondary fertigation water to accommodate specific nutrient demands of crops.

Maria Wirth - Researcher & Project Developer - alchemia-nova GmbH