The Benefits of Sharing—Nice Guys and Girls do Finish First - Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs - page 25

FIGURE 2.5 Details of industrial symbiosis between PV and glass manufacturing.
Optimization occurs if the demand for the glass materials is large enough to warrant a ded-
icated line that produces solar-grade glass. This is necessary because glass specifically manu-
factured with low iron content for PV cells can increase the sunlight entering the cell by about
15% and have a corresponding improvement in device performance [ 27 ] . At current solar PV
manufacturing lines for thin films, altering the glass recipe for small batches is uneconomic,
but this is reversed at large scales of manufacturing [ 29 ] . Historically, sheet glass was rarely
customized for PV cell production, now as PV manufacturers couple with glass manufactur-
ers, the cost of completed modules is falling rapidly [ 30 ] . The energy savings was found to be
over 12%, and this symbiosis also cuts the use of 5266 ton of crude oil per year and reduces
glass inputs into the factory by 30,000 ton per year [ 31 ] . These energy and materials savings
can all be directly related to saving money/reducing costs.
The production stages in the glass factory that utilize large amounts of heat have integrated
thermal recovery to provide lower grade heat and carbon dioxide for a multiacre “waste heat”
tomato greenhouse complex (3a) shown in Figure 2.6 [ 32 ] . In the greenhouse complex, plants
can be grown year round in even northern climates utilizing the waste heat from the manu-
facturing plants in the ecoindustrial park and this approach will be detailed in the second ex-
ample below. Similarly, the waste heat could instead (or in addition to) be utilized to provide
grow rooms for mushrooms (3b). In both agricultural plants, the food or other agricultural
products is sold outside the park and the growing medium will be provided by the recycling
facility (1), compost for the greenhouse (3a) and wood pulp or compost for the mushroom
growing facility (3b).