Page 99 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

Industrial Symbiosis at 3
the Bazancourt-Pomacle Biorefinery

Summary
Industrial ecology, or industrial symbiosis, concerns the synergy developed
between different actors in an integrated biorefinery. This synergy mainly
takes the form of exchanges of by-products in an industrial cascading process,
where the product of one of the industrial firms (an output) becomes an input
for another. This cascade can continue through several levels in the case of
vertical integration. Some exchanges can take the form of services (R&D,
waste treatment, shared staff restaurant, joint purchases, staff
secondment...).
The systematic study of industrial symbiosis is relatively a recent phenome-
non (1989) and is the subject of increasing interest on the part of States,
investors and analysts due to its benefits in terms of promoting sustainable
development and a circular economy. This type of study is however difficult
to carry out due to the confidential nature of competitive operations.
This study of industrial symbiosis at the Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery is
the first of its kind. It shows that as early as the beginning of the 1990s, with
the creation of the joint R&D firm, ARD, industrial ecology was central to the
biorefinery’s strategy. At the beginning, an “agro-system” set up through the
combined efforts of farmers, refiners and the biorefinery, gradually became
an industrial estate, and then an innovation platform, in which symbiosis was
a key element: within both the sugar beet and wheat processes, exchanges of
raw juice, sugar syrup, glucose, alcohol and CO 2 developed in different
directions. Two support resources were also combined: water and energy in
the form of steam. Waste treatment and spraying was also combined; these
are all pivotal aspects of symbiosis. In addition to the historical sugar
CRISTAL UNION plant (the motor), starting with the creation of

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# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 67
P.-A. Schieb et al., Biorefinery 2030, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-47374-0_3