While eco-balances and Material Flow Networks are common analysis tools of Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS), discrete event simulation has not been used widely for this purpose. This paper argues in favour of combining discrete event simulation with material flow analysis to explore both the environmental and economic impact of business decisions. After a brief overview of core characteristics and benefits of discrete event simulation and material flow analysis using Material Flow Networks, a plug-in architecture for generating customized material flow simulators is presented. The benefits of this framework's component-based structure are then discussed in terms of its practical application to the lithography stage of the semiconductor manufacturing process. A summary of the framework's most significant characteristics and areas of application concludes the paper.

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Combining discrete event simulation and material flow analysis in a component-based approach to industrial environmental protection

Copper has always played an important role in human development. Demand for copper is going to rise, which makes its future supply a key issue for society. However, the oft-discussed declining ore grade and, therefore, the assumed enormous increase in energy demand and global warming potential could lead to a supply constraint. To develop suitable strategies to ensure copper availability, it is important to better understand the relationship between energy and ore grade and also its development. Therefore, in this paper we describe the development of the cumulative energy demand of copper production over the last eight decades and give an outlook into the future using a holistic process-based modelling approach. We also discuss how technological progress has thus far been able to offset the decreasing ore grade. However, if geological factors are becoming less favorable, technological improvements such as renewable energies are vital to keep this trend going.

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Historical, Current, and Future Energy Demand from Global Copper Production and Its Impact on Climate Change

Material flow analysis (MFA) becomes more and more an important instrument to support environmental protection and sustainable development. Often, a special approach, life-cycle assessment (LCA), is put on the same level with material flow analysis. Based on the industrial ecology or industrial metabolism paradigm (Fischer-Kowalski 1998, Fischer-Kowalski and Huttler 1999), we interpret material flow analysis in a broader sense. That makes it possible to simulate, to analyze and, as a subsequent step, to optimize multi-product systems. This contribution shows how simulation and optimization can utilized in the field of material flow analysis. It can be shown that the different approaches are not alternatives. Rather, it is possible to combine them in order to provide a flexible MFA tool-chain.

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Simulation and optimization of material and energy flow systems

This paper describes basic ideas behind a new standard on how data between Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems and Industrial Environmental Management Information Systems (IEMIS) can be exchanged. It gives an example of how these data can be passed into the IEMIS Umberto and shortly discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.

Exchanging Environmental Relevant Data between ERP Systems and Industrial Environmental Management Information Systems Using PAS 1025.

Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is the procedure of measuring and assessing the mass flows of matter (solid waste, water, food...) and substances (carbon, phosphorus ...) within a process or a system for the period of time. In this paper we propose a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to model MFA in a waste management modeling context. The result is that we integrate the DSL within a waste management modeling software called EASETECH and we show how the proposed DSL allows the domain experts to extend the software without involving of software developers.

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Peter Muller-Beilschmidt

Papers

Environmental Material Flow Analyses by Network Approach