Towards sustainable systems configurations: application to an existing fish and seafood canning industry

Abstract

Spain is the first fish and seafood canning producer country in the European Union. Within Spain, the Galician (North-western Spain) canning enterprises dominate the market, being tuna the main species processed in the Spanish fish and seafood canning industries. In this context, this paper analyzes a Galician fish and seafood canning enterprise from the point of view of sustainability. To this end, an existing methodology combining Material and Energy Flow Analysis and Best Available Techniques analysis was enhanced, including for the first time the Exergy Analysis to detect the Improvable Flows of the process and to propose techniques that can minimize the environmental effects of these flows. The final methodology has been applied to a tuna canning process, resulting in the identification of 16 improvable flows, and the selection through best available techniques analysis of 14 alternatives to enhance the process. The application of the methodology developed in this work to an industrial system provides a way to detect material, energy or exergy improvable flows in a process, allowing industrial technicians into selecting the more suitable modifications to implement in their processes, in order to get its optimal alternative.