Project Status: Complete
Project Participants: Alcoa, Curtin University of Technology, University of Queensland, Kwinana Industries Council
Project Leader: Glen Corder (University of Queensland)
This project aimed to encourage and facilitate the greater utilisation of regional synergy opportunities to improve the overall eco-efficiency of resource processing intensive regions. The project reviewed and documented current and emerging best practice, developed and trialled a novel methodology for regional eco-efficiency opportunity assessments and assessed synergy technology needs and opportunities. The work fed into and built upon the regional projects in Kwinana (3B1) and Gladstone (3C1), and sought to seed new synergy initiatives in other resource processing intensive regions.
The main goal was to deliver a package of tools that would provide a rigorous and systematic approach to identify and rank synergy opportunities and associated technologies for new and existing industries within an industrial area. To achieve this, the project developed a publicly available database of good industrial ecology examples, which includes Kwinana, Gladstone, Forth Valley, Puerto Rico, Kalundborg, Tampico and Quebec. A Regional Synergy Opportunity Toolkit was developed to identify, evaluate and screen regional synergy opportunities through a three-level process – trials were conducted at Kwinana, Gladstone, Geelong, Wagga Wagga and Rustenburg (South Africa). The project also developed approaches to assess and evaluate the viability of feasible technologies for identified water and energy/heat regional synergy opportunities.