Designing Manufacturing Sites Toward Local Sustainability by Understanding Spatial Variance of Industrial Air Pollution and Local Ecosystem Regulation

Despite the many services ecosystems provide, traditional engineering has excluded these services, often impacting the ecosystems on which we rely for our well-being and survival. Including ecosystems within sustainable process design enables eco-based solutions to increase the supply of ecosystem services, rather than solely focusing on decreasing the demand. This research advances the concept of such techno-ecological systems through exploring the spatial variation of both the ecological deposition and the dispersion of the air pollution from a given source. This knowledge can determine areas where land-use change can have the highest impact in meeting sustainability goals by implementing land restoration and management methods. A case study was conducted on a biodisel production facility in Cincinnati, OH, focusing on SO2 stack emissions and dry deposition of local ecosystems. EPA-approved atmospheric transport model, CALPUFF, was used to model disperion and deposition of of SO2 and then paired with optimization methods to choose optimal land-use change scenarios, given different constraints. Both technological and ecological decision variables and constraints were determined to replicate realistic scenarios. The case study led to quantitative defintions for determing air quality regulation servicesheds and application of optimization methods over a techno-ecological system which recognizes spatially heterogeneity of transport and land-use, enabling smarter industrial site design.