ENVIRONMENTALLY BALANCED INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXES
Nelson Leonard Nemerow, Professor
Avijit Dasgupta. Graduate Research Assistant
Civil Engineering Department
University of Miami
Coral Gables, Florida 33124
Although the real measurable cost of industrial environmental pollution control remains
relatively small when compared to total production or value added costs, it can be considered a significant amount when considered by itself. In fact, it may be enough to influence management of an industry to produce or discontinue the manufacture of specific
consumer goods. While we as environmental engineers are usually not involved in that
decision, our goal should be to reduce treatment costs to a minimum while protecting the
environment to a maximum.
Environmentally balanced industrial complexes (EBIC) are simply a selective collection
of compatible industrial plants located together in a complex so as to minimize environmental impact as well as industrial production costs. These objectives are accomplished
by utilizing the waste materials of one plant as the raw materials for another with a minimum of transportation, storage, and raw materials preparation costs. When the same industry neither treats its wastes, nor imports, stores, or pre-treats its raw materials, its overall
production costs must be reduced significantly.
In conventional industrial solutions to waste problems, industry uses separate treatment
plant units such as physical, chemical, and biological systems. These add production costs
onto already highly competitive manufacturing problems. These costs are also easily identified and, even if relatively small when compared to other production costs, strenuously
opposed or rejected to by industry. On the other hand, reuse costs, if any, in an environmentally balanced industrial complex, will be difficult to identify and more easily absorbed
into reasonable production costs.
Large, water-consuming, and waste-producing industrial plants are ideally suited for location in such industrial complexes. Not only are their wastes hazardous to our fragile environment, but they are also amenable to reuse by close association with satellite industrial plants
using wastes and producing raw materials for others within the complex. Examples of such
major industries are steel mills, fertilizer plants, pulp and paper mills, and tanneries.
These complexes are not without their own problems, or at least some unknowns which
may determine their acceptability. For example, will it be politically and socially feasible
to encourage several specific industries of specific production capacity to locate in one
complex at a specific site? Will contaminants build up in recirculated and reused wastewaters to a degree which will interfere with production? Or will these contaminants be
removed in the manufactured products and cause product quality rejections? How will
fluctuations in product demand in the external market affect production in the complex?
Will special temporary storage facilities be necessary? Will malfunctioning of equipment
in the production of one product affect the other components within the complex? These
and other answers need verification before continuing promotion of the complexes.
At this time we will propose and describe preliminary concepts of four complexes centered about the following four major industries: (1) fertilizer; (2) steel mill; (3) pulp and
paper; and (4) tannery. Some of the same auxiliary industrial plants will be located in
several complexes. We deem this necessary because many major industrial plant wastes
are somewhat similar in nature.
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