A Computational Platform for Assessing Organic Waste Management Strategies in the Food-Energy-Water Nexus
Citation:
Hu, Y., R. Larson, V. Zavala, AND Gerardo J. Ruiz-Mercado. A Computational Platform for Assessing Organic Waste Management Strategies in the Food-Energy-Water Nexus. AIChE 2019 Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, November 10 - 15, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Optimal management strategies of organic waste will be required to achieve a more comprehensive and efficient solution for nutrient pollution, energy security, and reduce the human impact on the environment. This conference presentation abstract describes an easy-to-use online multi-media supply chain tool for integrated organic waste, nutrient management science, engineering, economics, and stakeholder engagement. This contribution supports the management of organic waste which has broad-scale implications for the environment in the US, with interest for Regions, states, communities, and the public looking for cost-effective solutions to address energy security negative impacts caused by inefficient management of organic waste, nutrient pollution, and HABs.
Description:
The areas of food, energy, and water are crucial sectors in human life, and these are posing significant challenges in economic, environmental, and social areas as the population continues to grow. Managing the organic waste generated from those economic sectors who support the well-functioning of the whole society is a challenge [1]. However, the nature of interactions and interdependencies makes the food, energy and water (FEW) sector a very complex nexus system, and this nature is inherited to the organic waste management problem in such FEW nexus. For example, the dairy industry in the state of Wisconsin (U.S.) contains 1,280,000 dairy cows producing dairy food products, but also 6,400,000 kilogallons of manure annually [2]. The cow manure, in turn, can be used in anaerobic digestion and thus produce biogas and energy. In addition, the organic waste generated in the nexus, such as animal manure and food waste, is highly distributed and usually needs collection and central processing [3]. Considering the complexity of the nexus and the nature of the organic waste, supply chain management (and optimization) has been proven as an efficient method for analyzing this type of holistic, integrated, and multi-media problem and estimating its overall economic and environmental impacts [4-6]. To provide best practices for integrated organic waste, nutrient management science, engineering, economics, and stakeholder engagement, we have developed an easy-to-use online multi-media supply chain tool. The tool has two modes, the demo mode, and the expert mode. In the demo modes, we have included results and conclusions from several pre-solved cases to allow stakeholders to do parametric studies and observe how individual-level changes can impact the whole supply chain system. And in the expert mode, the stakeholders can define the scope of their own organic waste management problem using visualization tools, graphs, and upload their own data. Some basic databases containing data from published literature, the technical support for modeling and solving the supply chain problem will be provided. The results visualization is also automated using a back-end geographic information system (GIS) tool. The capability of this tool will be discussed, and a simple tutorial will be given during this talk.