| Sustainability is critical for the long-term development of individual industries. Although each individual company is more or less self-operated and self-adapted, due to supply and demand, they are interconnected naturally due to various mass and energy flows.; In this paper, the sustainability of an industrial region including several refineries, two paper mills, and a number of chemical companies which produce both intermediates and specialty chemicals are studied. To properly perform the analysis, both historical and current data on the technical, economic, environmental, and societal aspects are analyzed. To improve sustainability, two types of strategies have been identified and will be delineated in detail. One is for the area industries to work closer together in order to enhance the existing network to effectively utilize all of the available resources, including everything from raw materials to the products and wastes. The other is to embrace new technologies into the existing infrastructure, such as the production of biofuel and nanotechnology. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
