Two aspects of consumption: using an exergy-based measure of degradation to advance the theory and implementation of industrial ecology

Abstract The theory of industrial ecology (IE) and the implementation of IE strategies are both hindered by inadequate definitions of consumption and recycling. In this paper, we introduce a definition of consumption that separates the consumptive process into two independent, quantifiable phenomena: throughput and degradation. We propose that exergy removal be used to provide a non-resource specific measure of material degradation. We also introduce an exergy-based definition of material cycling — cycling of material exergy (CME) — and describe how it quantifies the differences among three distinct categories of material re-use: upgrading, recirculation, and cascading. Finally, we use a simple, quantitative example involving three methanol-water waste streams to demonstrate exergy-based measures of consumption and material cycling.

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