Contextualisation in industrial energy symbiosis: Design process for a knowledge repository

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) encourages companies to adopt a collaborative approach so that resources can be recovered, reprocessed and reused elsewhere within their industrial network. It entails both environmental and economic benefits mainly due to the reduction of resources consumption and waste generation. However, in spite of potential benefits of IS, there is still a considerable implementation gap, with practitioners failing to fully exploit the possibilities of IS. One of the main barriers for IS implementation, but also one of the main research opportunities, is the high degree of characterization needed for the design of IS in different contexts. Thus, the development of tools and methods to address contextualization challenges is now a priority for researchers. In the present work, a methodology for the creation of an Energy Synergies Database, as well as first findings from the analysis of case studies are presented. The creation of such database allows to provides the practitioner with useful background for IS implementation. In addition, the contextualization of different energy flows given by the classification of flows' end uses and the proposal of synergy typologies, allows practitioners to extract useful additional information from the knowledge repository, enabling an innovative systemic approach to IS implementation.