A Technology-based Analysis of the Industrial Water-Energy-Emission Nexus

Rapid industrial development has led to intensive water and energy consumption, as well as massive pollution in China. Many water-saving, energy-saving, and pollution control policies have been formulated across the nation. A... [ view full abstract ]

Rapid industrial development has led to intensive water and energy consumption, as well as massive pollution in China. Many water-saving, energy-saving, and pollution control policies have been formulated across the nation. A technology-based approach aiming at revealing the interrelationships (synergies and offsets) within the water, energy and emission nexus (WEEN) is introduced. This bottom-up method provides an insight into WEEN as well as its evolutionary configurations given various technical choice, multi-objectives and parameter variation. To start with, the water flow, energy flow and pollution flow associated with the entire industrial production processes are systematically accounted by applying material and energy flow analysis (MEFA) approaches to develop a virtual plant. Two case studies on the thermal power industry and the steel industry of China are implemented based on field survey data in 2014. The results show that the water-energy-SO₂ nexus, accounting for 70% of energy for pollutants removal and nearly 100% of water for pollutants removal, is more intensified than the water-energy-dust/NOx nexus in the thermal power industry. Yet, the water-energy-dust nexus, accounting for 56% of energy for pollutants removal and 19% of water for pollutants removal, is more significant in steel industry. Second, a Pareto optimization method is applied to identify the most feasible technique sets given certain expected environmental and economic goals. The results suggest that SO₂ emission is the most sensitive to the change of optimization objective functions, especially when the cost is taken into consideration. The SO₂ emission quantity could dramatically increase almost 30 times if only NOx emission, water and energy consumption, and cost are minimized. Whereas, NOx emission is the least sensitive to the change of optimization objectives. Finally, the uncertainty of technical parameter values is taken into account as well. The results imply that dust emission quantity will vary considerably given parameter variation within each technical set. The SO₂ emission is relatively stable with different technical sets. The uncertainty analysis of Pareto optimization is ongoing, and will be reported in the presentation.

Keywords: water-energy-emission nexus; technical choice analysis; uncertainty analysis