Sustainable energy-water-food nexus integration and carbon management in eco-industrial parks

Today, resource depletion is a significant threat to society, exacerbated by the increasing demand for water, energy, and food resources driven by rapid population growth. Coupled with environmental conservation efforts, designing optimised and integrated Energy-Water-Food-Carbon nexus networks is increasingly essential. The objective of this study is to design a systematic approach to study the integration of the Energy-Water-Food-Carbon nexus within eco-industrial parks, uniquely focusing on the combination of the Energy-Water-Food nexus concept, constituting technology sub-systems, and carbon capture/utilisation processes. The resulting network superstructure representative of an industrial park and a case study in Qatar, consists of multiple sources and sinks, including, chemical processes (gas-to-liquid, methanol, ammonia, and liquified natural gas), desalination, wastewater treatment, representative food processes, biomass gasification, waste heat recovery and carbon capture units. Multiple scenarios are simulated and solved using the “what's Best” Mixed-Integer Global Solver to capture the synergic potential and trade-offs within resource management. The outcomes determine that the biomass driven and carbon capture utilisation scenarios are the most significant, which improve all emissions by 11.4% and 40%, respectively, while there was no significant change in the scenario of wastewater treatment and reuse. The total cost of the optimum solution after biomass utilisation is almost 3% more expensive compared to the base scenario. Furthermore, the waste heat utilisation scenario can potentially reduce a corresponding global warming potential amount of almost 1.55 × 10⁴ Mt CO₂-eq/yr for more efficient resource management.

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Published in: Journal of Cleaner Production
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138071