(525e) Multi-Criteria Decision Support Tools for the Optimization of Input-Output Models for Industrial Symbiosis at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate, Trinidad

Enterprise Input-Output (EIO) models were used to analyze the flows of resources, such as energy and materials, around petrochemical-manufacturing networks. This type of analysis shows that there are opportunities for industrial symbiosis (IS) where waste streams (such as contaminated water), and valuable by-product streams (such as process carbon dioxide), can be shared between different plants. To accelerate the intensification of the IS, multi-criteria decision support tools are being developed utilizing multi-objective optimization (MOO) algorithms from the optimization toolboxes as well as bespoke code for popular MOO methods on a MATLAB platform. The optimization seeks to minimize costs, waste emissions, as well as fresh materials. With the optimization results, multi-criteria decision methods can be coded in MATLAB and used to choose the ‘best’ of the optimal results. The MATLAB function, ‘digraph’, can then be used to generate network diagrams that display the connections between the source and sink plants as well as the amount of flow between plants in the optimized network. From utilizing the various features of MATLAB, optimizations of complex network models were carried out and networks were developed. For models containing linear constraints, it was found that the bespoke code outperformed the algorithms in the toolboxes. The results obtained assisted in assessing the sustainability impacts of proposed IS networks and shows that the MATLAB platform can successfully be used investigating IS networks.