Industrial symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis to improve zero waste production system: middle Italy wine district case study

This article studies the energetic potential of biogas obtainable from winery waste production through an anaerobic digestion (AD) process, within the territorial context of Emilia Romagna in Italy. The winery district produces about 5.2 million tons of grapes. These wastes are processes by anaerobic digestion in 5 biodigesters, this methodology allows to re- introduce in the production process 800,000 tons of food waste, consisting of: vegetable waste, wood chips and waste from pruning.

Industrial symbiosis and urban areas: A systematic literature review and future research directions

This paper proposes a systematic literature review concerning the implementation of industrial symbiosis (IS) within urban areas, a concept that has been defined by the literature as "urban symbiosis" and "urban-industrial symbiosis", indifferently. 26 papers published between 2009 and 2018 are analyzed. This review is aimed at highlighting: (1) the specific research goals addressed; (2) the IS synergies currently implemented within urban areas; and (3) barriers and enablers to the implementation of IS within urban areas. Suggestions for future research are also proposed.

Cooperation in manure-based biogas production networks: An agent-based modeling approach

Biogas production from manure has been proposed as a partial solution to energy and environmental concerns. However, manure markets face distortions caused by considerable unbalance between supply and demand and environmental regulations imposed for soil and water protection. Such market distortions influence the cooperation between animal farmers, biogas producers and arable land owners causing fluctuations in manure prices paid (or incurred) by animal farmers.

The role of online information-sharing platforms on the performance of industrial symbiosis networks

From technical perspective, an important condition for developing industrial symbiosis (IS) is the match between waste supply and demand. Such a match is hampered by lack of information among companies, i.e., demand (supply) for waste exists but firms producing (requiring) that waste are not aware of such a demand (supply). Despite online information-sharing platforms are proposed to support the creation of industrial symbiosis networks (ISNs), related environmental and economic benefits are not in-depth investigated. This paper firstly aims to fill this gap.

Business models for industrial symbiosis: A taxonomy focused on the form of governance

The aim of this paper is to propose a taxonomy of industrial symbiosis (IS) business models. Rather than to adopt a firm perspective, we take a system perspective and focus on the governance of the system made up of the firms implementing IS, being the latter considered an important factor influencing firm's competitive advantage. Four extreme IS business models are identified, characterized on the basis of two governance features: (1) need for coordination and (2) centralization of control.

The impact of technical and economic disruptions in industrial symbiosis relationships: An enterprise input-output approach

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is recognized as an effective practice to support circular economy and sustainable development because it is able to enhance the technical efficiency of production processes, provided IS relationships among companies remain active over the long period. However, although it has been established that IS relationships can be vulnerable to disruptive events that reduce the willingness of companies to cooperate in IS synergies, to date few contributions to the literature focus attention on the events which lead firms to interrupt IS synergies.

Sustainable operations of industrial symbiosis: an enterprise input-output model integrated by agent-based simulation

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a key for implementing circular economy. Through IS, wastes produced by one company are used as inputs by other companies. The operations of IS suffers from uncertainty barriers since wastes are not produced upon demand but emerge as secondary outputs. Such an uncertainty, triggered by waste supply-demand quantity mismatch, influences IS business dynamics. Accordingly, companies have difficulty to foresee potential costs and benefits of implementing IS.

Energy-based industrial symbiosis: a literature review for circular energy transition

Nowadays, industrial symbiosis (IS) is recognized as a key strategy to support the transition toward the circular economy. IS deals with the (re)use of wastes produced by a production process as a substitute for traditional production inputs of other traditionally disengaged processes. In this context, this paper provides a systematic literature review on the energy-based IS approach, i.e., IS synergies aimed at reducing the amount of energy requirement from outside industrial systems or the amount of traditional fuels used in energy production.

© Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" - Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma