Assessing industrial symbiosis potential in Emerging Industrial Clusters: The case of Persian Gulf Mining and metal industries special economic zone

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a means for sustainable cluster development. The first consideration for implementing IS in a cluster is to identify technical opportunities for exchanging waste material and or energy. However, the definition and methods for assessing the technical potential of IS are not elaborated in the literature. This research proposes a method to evaluate IS potential that considers different system boundaries. The method allows for explicitly reflecting current and expected developments at plant and cluster level. The suggested method was applied to the Persian Gulf Mining and Metals Special Economic Zone (PGSEZ) in Iran. The case study shows that expanding the system boundaries to include the waste flows inside steelmaking and direct reduction plants could result in an 8% increase in available waste heat. Heat recovery possibilities outside the cluster boundaries offered 118 MW cooling plus 368 MW heating potential compared to 158 MW demand for electricity in the cluster. Furthermore, less than 20% of generated by-products could currently be reused in the cluster, while theoretically all by-products could be utilized today in other industries such as cement and ceramic. These findings support the use of IS as a way to open new perspectives for EIC development policies.