Quantitative environmental risk assessment for the iron and steel industrial symbiosis network

An industrial symbiosis network consists of physical material exchanges among network members that have materials, energy, and by-products interaction with one another. Emergent accidents in a complex industrial symbiosis network may cause secondary or higher order events in a nearby unit and give rise to a series of environmental risks, leading to negative effects on the environment. The iron and steel industrial symbiosis network for local physical exchange has a potential environmental risk due to its numerous hazardous materials and pollutants. This paper proposes a quantitative environmental risk framework for an iron and steel industrial symbiosis network that mapped a realistic situation in 2012. The environmental risk assessment includes individual node environmental risk and environment risk transmission between nodes. The results demonstrate that without symbiosis, the coking plant is at a high environmental risk level followed by the sintering, ironmaking, steelmaking, stainless steel, sewage treatment plant and thermal power plants. However, in the industrial symbiosis network, the ironworks thermal power plant link has the highest environmental risk propagation coefficient (0.104). With symbiotic risk transmission, the steel processing plant and the thermal power plant increase in risk level priority, whereas the other nodes remain at previous risk levels. Consequently, the iron and steel industrial symbiosis network remains at moderate environmental risk in spite of environmental risk index increases (average risk index from 31.95 to 36.14). The focus is on the risks of the whole industrial symbiosis network, and the results will provide mitigation strategies for environmental risk to the industrial symbiosis network and benefit to environmental risk management in an industrial park. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.