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Plenary Lecture

An Industrial Ecology Strategy for Preventing Thermal and Chemical Pollution of Waterbodies Caused by Geothermal Liquid Discharges

Professor Fragiskos Batzias
Laboratory of Simulation of Industrial Processes
Department of Industrial Management and Technology
University of Piraeus
Greece
E-mail: fbatzi@unipi.gr

Abstract: Industrial Ecology (IE) is a methodological framework that deals with energy and materials flows within a system of inventories and processes, including natural resources and the environment. This framework can be used for the maximization of system’s sustainability by optimizing each constituent unit separately and their combination as a whole. Geothermal energy, under the form of high temperature (>150 oC) liquid, can be used for operating three major types of power plants: dry-steam, flash-steam, and binary-cycle. Geothermal liquids of moderate or lower temperature X (i.e., 150 oC>X>90 oC and X<90 oC, respectively) are frequently used for direct applications, like district or space or greenhouse heating, aquaculture (especially fish-farming), and heat exchanging in industrial processes, including decentralized units (e.g., for desalination). On the other hand, the spent liquid may cause chemical and thermal pollution in the waterbodies where it is discharged due to its (i) relatively (to the ambient) elevated temperature and (ii) high concentration of polluting elements. In this work, an inter-/multi-disciplinary approach is adopted, based on economic/technical/environmental criteria for determining the optimal subsidy to be granted by the State in order to facilitate exploitation of geothermal fields in a sustainable way. For this purpose, an objective function is synthesized in economic terms, where technical/environmental factors enter as control variables/parameters and constraints/restrictions. Since, in the time course, energy and materials prices rise, the exploitation of geothermal fields of lower enthalpy becomes feasible while recycling of certain polluting elements seems promising. An implementation for a Greek island of the Aegean Sea is presented and the results are discussed.

Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Fragiskos Batzias holds a 5years Diploma and a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering, and a BSc in Economics. He has also studied Mathematics and Philosophy. He is Director of the Laboratory of Simulation of Industrial Processes and Head of the Research Group on Systems Analysis at the Department of Industrial Management and Technology of the University of Piraeus, Greece. He is teaching at the interdepartmental postgraduate courses (i) Systems of Energy Management and Protection of the Environment, running by the University of Piraeus in cooperation with the Chem. Eng. Dept. of the Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens, and (ii) Techno-Economic Systems, running by the Electr. & Comp. Eng. Dept. of the Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens in cooperation with the University of Athens and the University of Piraeus. His research interests are in chemical engineering systems analysis and knowledge based decision making. He has >100 publications in highly ranked journals and conference proceedings, including 29 research monographs in collective volumes, with 171 citations and an h-index of 8 (for the period 2004-2012, source: ISI Web of Science, Thompson Scientific; self-citations have been excluded).
He has participated (and chaired after invitation from the organizers) in prestigious international conferences, such as those organized periodically by the IEEE, the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE), the DECHEMA, CHISA, WSEAS Organizations. He organizes the annual Symposium on Industrial and Environmental Case Studies running successfully since 2004 within the International Conference of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering (ICCMSE).

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