Industrial Ecology in Historical Perspective

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Industrial Ecology ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Transportation Systems ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Simple Product ◽  
Ultimate Fate

Industry consumes natural resources and makes wastes as it manufactures and delivers products to consumers. Subsequent use of a product— its eventual discard, recycling, or storage in a waste depository—puts additional demands on the environment. Decisions made by many different individuals direct the progress of a product through manufacture, use, and disposal. In the past, each decision maker along this chain responded to concerns that encompassed only a fraction of the product’s progression from raw materials to ultimate fate. No one had much reason to enlarge these decision horizons as long as natural resources remained abundant, and the industrial impact on the environment was small compared with natural processes of environmental change. Now people in the western industrialized nations realize that their consumption of goods and services could change the environment in ways that rival natural causes. Their heightened awareness led scientists and engineers to start systematically investigating the life cycles of industrial products. These investigators soon found that Western industry has created a web of resource use so complex that tracing the demands made by even a single, simple product on the environment requires the new analytical methods of industrial ecology. Industrial ecologists see the farm and the factory as the main sources of environmental change caused by people. With their focus on the factory, along with its associated mines, power plants, and transportation systems, they search out the consequences of consuming natural resources to make and use material goods and generate energy. They study resources consumed, wastes released, and the fate of discarded products. They may include in their research advocacy of, and searching for, means to minimize the environmental impacts of industry. They look to a future where recycling eliminates all wastes and where energy comes from renewable resources. Most see a guiding principle in sustainability, the concept that each generation should leave to the next undiminished opportunities for fulfillment of material needs. People make their decisions about the production, consumption, and disposal of material goods in terms of the costs and benefits they perceive, and they may be unwilling to bear extra costs for environmental benefits that offer them no immediate rewards.

Community, Culture, and Industrial Ecology

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
New England ◽  
Industrial Ecology ◽  
Continuous Production ◽  
New Towns ◽  
The People ◽  
Cloth Production ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Material Goods

The people who settied northwestern Connecticut created an agricultural surplus that allowed them to undertake industrial ventures within a few years of their arrival. Their knowledge of the mechanical arts, coupled with the region’s natural resources, gave them opportunities to make material goods needed by their neighbors. Successive generations continued industrial use of the region’s natural resources over the next two centuries, each making its own choices about how to structure its enterprise within the framework of values and beliefs held separately by individuals and in common within the community. Each had to respond to changes in markets and the advent of new products and techniques. These opportunities, and the participants’ choices about how to use them, combined to create the region’s industrial ecology. Like the rest of the New England hill country, northwestern Connecticut had two abundant, renewable natural resources: streams with steep gradients and reliable flow for waterpower, and forest that covered the large areas that were too steep or too thinly mantled with soil for decent pasture. Millwrights could easily build waterpower systems on the streams, and farmers could manage the forest for continuous production of fuel wood, since it regrew trees to useful size within about twenty years. Unlike other highlands, however, northwestern Connecticut had a unique mineral resource: iron ore beds unmatched elsewhere in New England. Everyone in the newly settled lands and on the frontiers expanding into Vermont and New York in the early eighteenth century needed iron products. As described in chapter 3, individuals throughout the Salisbury district, aided by family members or fluid partnerships, built bloomery forges that they operated as components of their cropping, husbandry, or mercantile enterprises. Nearly every family in Kent and the other new towns had a partner in one of the forges. Individuals lacking metallurgical skills or access to any capital dug ore or cut wood. Others developed their skills as colliers or millwrights. Negotiated exchanges of labor and services among these artisans promoted interdependence within the community. As the colonists in southern New England increasingly mechanized their grain, timber, and cloth production in the mid—eighteenth century, they brought a new opportunity to the ironmakers of the Salisbury disno trict. By making standard parts for grain mills, sawmills, fulling mills, and oil mills that they could distribute widely, Salisbury ironmakers added value to the bar iron they made and enlarged the scope of their market.

Introduction

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Beinart ◽  
Lotte Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
British Empire ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Combustion Engine ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
World Order ◽  
History Of

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it precipitated the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia (but not of Africa and Asia); it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it—and arguably also recent global asymmetries in wealth and power. European empires helped to produce the multiple states that are the basis of the world order, and influenced many of their key institutions. Imperial legacies have contributed to some of the world’s major recent conflicts. European imperialism was also inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming; some displaced indigenous peoples and their methods of managing the land. Colonial cities, many of which have become great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. By contrast, while natural resources have been intensely exploited, a related process, the rise of conservationist practices and ideas, was also deeply rooted in imperial history. Large tracts of land have been reserved for forests, national parks, or wildlife. Most environmental histories deal with reciprocal interactions between people and other elements in the natural world. Few see humans as entirely ‘super-natural’—or above nature. Our book on the British Empire emerges from these concerns. It is not an environmental interpretation of empire, nor do we have sufficient space or knowledge to write a definitive environmental history of the British Empire as a whole. Our aim is to illustrate diverse environmental themes in the history of that empire. In the first half of the book we concentrate on the material factors that shaped environmental change. We discuss the way in which an expanding capitalist economy devoured natural resources and transformed them into commodities.

Environment and Empire

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Beinart ◽  
Lotte Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Combustion Engine ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Change Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it underpinned the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia; it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it. Imperialism was inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established sugar plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming and displaced indigenous peoples. Colonial cities, many of which became great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world, and this book illustrates the diverse environmental themes in the history of empire. Initially concentrating on the material factors that shaped empire and environmental change, Environment and Empire discusses the way in which British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined, and farmed. Yet it is also clear that British settler and colonial states sought to regulate the use of natural resources as well as commodify them. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, and to guarantee efficient use of soil and water. Exploring these linked themes of exploitation and conservation, this study concludes with a focus on political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources. In a post-imperial age, they have found a new voice, reformulating ideas about nature, landscape, and heritage and challenging, at a local and global level, views of who has the right to regulate nature.

Material costs in productural productivity structure: world trends and impact on development of the domestic economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-205
Author(s):  
N. V. Firov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
The State ◽  
Domestic Economy ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Material Costs

A comparative analysis of the prices of raw materials, fuel, electricity in Russia and Western countries, the dynamics of their growth and impact on the national economy. It is shown that in the interests of the country's economic development and improving the welfare of the population, it is necessary to use its natural resources more effectively, to pursue a more stringent and at the same time balanced policy to curb the growth of prices, taking into account the interests of the state and business.

Industrial Ecology of the Paper Industry

1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 21-24
Author(s):  
Tapio Pento
Keyword(s):  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Industrial Ecology ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Paper Industry ◽  
Waste Recycling ◽  
Optimal Recovery ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Earth Systems ◽  
Controversial Area ◽  
Recycling Systems

Industrial ecology (IE) is a biological concept applied to industrial structures. The basic concepts of IE include regional, intra-firm and product-based waste recycling systems as well as the principle of upward and downward cascading. In best current examples of regional systems, several parties are in an industrial waste re-use symbiosis. Paper industry has learned to arrange the recovery and re-use of its products on distant markets, even up to a level where indications of exceeding optimal recovery and re-use rates already exist through deteriorated fibre and product quality. Such occurrences will take place in certain legislative-economic situations. Paper industry has many cascade levels, each with their internal recovery and recycling, as well as many intra-firm, regional, and life cycle ecology structures. As an example of prospects for individual cascading routes, sludges may continue to be incinerated, but the route to landfills will be closed. The main obstacles of legislative drive toward better IE systems are in many cases existing laws and political considerations rather than economic or technical aspects. The study and practice of engineering human technology systems and related elements of natural systems should develop in such a way that they provide quality of life by actively managing the dynamics of relevant systems to reduce the risk and scale of undesirable behavior and outcomes. For the paper industry, earth systems engineering offers several development routes. One of them is the further recognition of and research on the fact that the products of the industry are returned back to the carbon cycle of the natural environment. Opportunities for modifying current earth systems may also be available for the industry, e.g. genetically modified plants for raw materials or organisms for making good quality pulp out of current raw materials. It is to be recognized that earth systems engineering may become a very controversial area, and that very diverse political pressures may determine its future usefulness to the paper industry.

Australia—The Hidden Jewel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahesh K. Joshi ◽  
J.R. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dutch Disease

The twenty-first century is being touted as the Asian century. With its stable economy, good governance, education system, and above all the abundant natural resources, will Australia to take its place in the global economy by becoming more entrepreneurial and accelerating its rate of growth, or will it get infected with the so-called Dutch disease? It has been successful in managing trade ties with fast-developing economies like China and India as well as developed countries like the United States. It has participated in the growth of China by providing iron ore and coal. Because it is a low-risk country, it has enabled inflow of large foreign capital investments. A lot will depend on its capability and willingness to invest the capital available in entrepreneurial ventures, its ability to capture the full value chain of natural resources, and to export the finished products instead of raw materials, while building a robust manufacturing sector.

Influence of the synthesis method of tert-butylated triphenyl phosphates on the operational properties of fire-resistant fluids

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 ◽  
pp. 32-37
Author(s):  
A.S. Medzhibovskiy ◽  
◽  
A.S. Kolokolnikov ◽  
A.O. Savchenko ◽  
G.A. Poldushova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Phosphorus Oxychloride ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Hydrolytic Stability ◽  
Synthesis Method ◽  
Acid Number ◽  
Release Time ◽  
Triphenyl Phosphate ◽  
Prolonged Contact

Three substituted aryl esters of orthophosphoric acid are the base component of fire-resistant fluids used in the lubricating and electro-hydraulic control system at steam and gas turbines of power plants. In this paper, we studied the possibility of improving the physicochemical and performance properties of phosphates, which are made of the raw materials available in the Russian Federation: phenol and 4-tert-butylphenol by reducing the content of an undesirable component - unsubstituted triphenyl phosphate, which is particularly vulnerable towards water. According to the results of the work, the conclusions were made: - a decrease in the content of triphenyl phosphate to a level of 1% and below leads to some improvement (reduction) of the air release time and an increase in the hydrolytic stability (represented as reducing the change in acid number after prolonged contact with water) of the fire-resistant fluid based on mixed esters. The degree of change of these properties is quantified. - it is possible to achieve the minimum content of triphenyl phosphate by changing the phosphorylation technology. By carrying out the process stepwise, the possibility of the interaction of phosphorus oxychloride with unsubstituted phenol is substantially eliminated, that is why there is almost no probability of an undesirable component formation in the resulting mixture of esters.

Solar Concentrating Systems Using Small Mirror Arrays

2009 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Göttsche ◽  
Bernhard Hoffschmidt ◽  
Stefan Schmitz ◽  
Markus Sauerborn ◽  
Reiner Buck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Plants ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Steel Structure ◽  
Steel Structures ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Wind Loads ◽  
Drive Systems ◽  
Mirror Area ◽  
The Cost

The cost of solar tower power plants is dominated by the heliostat field making up roughly 50% of investment costs. Classical heliostat design is dominated by mirrors brought into position by steel structures and drives that guarantee high accuracies under wind loads and thermal stress situations. A large fraction of costs is caused by the stiffness requirements of the steel structure, typically resulting in ∼20 kg/m2 steel per mirror area. The typical cost figure of heliostats (figure mentioned by Solucar at Solar Paces Conference, Seville, 2006) is currently in the area of 150 €/m2 caused by the increasing price of the necessary raw materials. An interesting option to reduce costs lies in a heliostat design where all moving parts are protected from wind loads. In this way, drives and mechanical layout may be kept less robust, thereby reducing material input and costs. In order to keep the heliostat at an appropriate size, small mirrors (around 10×10 cm2) have to be used, which are placed in a box with a transparent cover. Innovative drive systems are developed in order to obtain a cost-effective design. A 0.5×0.5 m2 demonstration unit will be constructed. Tests of the unit are carried out with a high-precision artificial sun unit that imitates the sun’s path with an accuracy of less than 0.5 mrad and creates a beam of parallel light with a divergence of less than 4 mrad.

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