LT: Economic and Optimization Analyses of the Reuse of Traditional Waste Materials

9814551 Swan本研究的目的是评估影响传统废弃物再利用/回收的因素。工业制造可以简化为直接或间接利用物质资源创造最终产品的一系列过程。废物不可避免地产生，这些废物必须加以处理和妥善处置。对于许多环境惰性材料，这种最终的材料管理策略效率极低，只会导致在堆填区处置。最有效的生态系统将是使其各种相互作用的组成部分（如材料、制造和废物管理过程）最优化，以便尽量减少原材料的使用和废物的产生，部分办法是尽量重复使用和回收废旧材料。这项研究分为两个互补的部分。第一部分将在一般层面上分析，如何将产品生产或使用中的“废物”转化为新产品生产中的“资源”(1)影响与原始产品和新产品相关的制造过程的本地和全球优化，以及(2)创建与新产品生产相关的新经济联系，并修改与原始产品相关的经济联系。研究将分析直接和间接的经济影响，并具体研究当后处理废物被重新分类为生产其他产品的原材料时，生产活动的优化是如何变化的。第二部分将把这些分析应用于最近开发的合成建筑骨料的情况，这些骨料是从两种传统上大量的废物材料：燃煤粉煤灰和可回收的废塑料中开发出来的。这项研究将导致开发一种工程工具，用于对新的和创新的建筑材料进行经济评估，从而为它们作为替代材料的使用提供更有力的理由。这项资助是根据美国国家科学基金会/朗讯科技公司1998年工业生态研究奖学金计划提供的。

9814551 Swan The objective of this research is to evaluate factors that effect the reuse/recycling of traditional waste products. Industrial manufacturing can be simplified into a set of processes that utilize, directly or indirectly, material resources to create final products. Waste materials are inevitably produced and these wastes must be handled and properly disposed of. For many environmentally inert materials, this final material management strategy is highly inefficient and simply results in disposal in landfills. The most efficient ecosystem would be one which optimizes its various interacting components (such as material, manufacturing and waste management processes) so as to minimize raw material use and waste generation, in part by maximizing the reuse and recycling of spent materials. The research is divided into two complimentary components. The first will analyze, on a generic level, how making a "waste" from the production or use of a product into a "resource" in the production of a new product (1) affects the local and global optimization of the manufacturing processes associated with both the original and new products, and (2) creates new economic linkages associated with the production of the new product as well as modifies those linkages associated with the original product. The research will analyze both the direct and indirect economic impacts, and specifically investigate how the optimization of production activities changes when post-process wastes are re-categorized as raw materials for production of other products. The second component will apply these analyses to the case of recently-developed, synthetic construction aggregates developed from two, traditionally large-quantity, waste materials: coal-combustion fly-ash and recoverable waste plastics. The research will lead to the development of an engineering tool for economic evaluation of new and innovative construction materials, thus providing a stronger rationale for their use as alternative materials. This grant is made pursuant to the joint NSF/Lucent Technologies Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships Program 1998.