Software agent for economic sustainability assessment of recycling technology

Abstract

This report presents the design and development of a software agent dedicated to providing industrial users with a forecast and evaluation tool for nickel recovery process in the economic and environmental aspects. A nickel recovery process has been developed by SIMTech for the local recycling companies, recovering nickel from industrial spent catalyst NiO compound. Incorporating the existing process model, the software agent focuses on taking into consideration of the uncertain inputs, such as nickel market price and NiO compound emission factor, and analyzing the economic profitability and carbon emissions of the process.

Monte Carlo simulation is heavily used to deal with the uncertain inputs in this project. The software agent developed in C# programming language relies on histograms to plot out the economic output probability distributions based on the cost model developed by SIMTech. It also projects the environmental impact in terms of total carbon emissions of the process with test results of NiO compound emission factor from CHNS Elemental Analysis.

The software agent developed in this project is capable to better help industrial users in decision making by forecasting possible profitability. It also raises awareness among users of the environmental impact of the nickel recovery process by providing estimation and breakdown of total carbon emissions. The combination of economic theory, mathematical knowledge and programming approach in this project appears feasible to use technology to further assist the decision making process for industrial users and serves as an example for future related studies.