The set-up of EPOS was to challenge its process industry partners to get to know each other and understand other sector's plants, operations, streams and management style. This resulted in a first innovation: the EPOS sector blueprints. Typical operating modes of a given industry sector are simulated with the aim of sharing information across sectors and to generalise findings. Virtual sector profiles are an open-innovative way to facilitate discussions between companies, but also with academia, policy makers and other stakeholders. The blueprints enable new ways of doing cross-sectorial business, starting from a sound industry pragmatism.
The second innovation concerns the EPOS IS toolbox, an integrated platform generating IS solutions in terms of potential economic and sustainability gains. The toolbox merges three existing tools: Osmose, a techno-environomic optimisation platform for energy integration in industry; LESTS, a legal, economic, spatial, technical and social survey for IS screening; and an IS footprinter for quantifying economic, ecological and social benefits. It is a user-friendly and functional interface to specify industrial sites, define the plant settings, add streams and technologies, and select key performance indicators to generate symbiosis options. It is designed to identify, assess, prioritise and manage IS projects and can be freely accessed from the EPOS User Club
A third innovation are the EPOS generic IS cases. From the experience built in the EPOS clusters and by using the EPOS toolbox, symbiosis cases with high replication potential and significant economic and socio-environmental benefits were condensed into one-pagers. They pitch a high-potential case by giving the physical stream, the service/technology or management interaction, next to the wins for each partner, for the environment and for society. Key messages allow to grasp the potential sustainability impact in an industrial cluster or a regional community and extrapolate the impact at European level.
Through collaboration with other SPIRE projects such as Sharebox, EPOS has actively contributed to a CEN workshop agreement on industrial symbiosis (CWA 17354:2018).
