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Advances in the Green Circular Economy: Forest and Agriculture Industry
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Advances in the Green Circular Economy: Forest and Agriculture Industry

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2020) | Viewed by 12528

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Teijo Palander

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Science and Forestry, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, FI-80101 Joensuu, Finland
Interests: wood procurement; bioeconomy; energy wood harvesting; forest industry logistics; wood supply chains; wood energy production control systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Kalle Kärhä

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Stora Enso, Forest Division, Wood Supply Finland, P.O. Box 309, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland
Interests: forest operations; logistics; industrial roundwood; energy wood; greenhouse gas emissions; carbon footprint; energy efficiency; sustainability; digitalization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The use of primary resources has been increased due to the improvement of economies. However, renewable resources are commonly undermanaged in industry. In addition, rapid development of renewable energy technologies and strict regulations on carbon emissions accelerate the development of sustainable systems, but the complexity of their management has increased. As a result, sustainable use of resources is becoming mandatory for the development of current economies in a viable way, in order to avoid global carbon emissions and climate warming. Hence, changing the form of industrialization can be viewed as a real opportunity. The main solution suggested is the so-called “Green Circular Economy”. This theory has been developed in order to encourage change in the general behavior of public policies, introducing management plans to recover circular materials. Papers selected for this Special Issue will focus on original research and reviews regarding the principle of the Green Circular Economy in industry. Sustainability and sustainable development cover environmental, social, and economic dimensions and require a multidisciplinary approach in order to examine and critically engage with issues and advances in these and related areas. In addition to covering the sustainable development, other areas are covered, including renewable energy self-sufficiency, energy return-on-investment, reducing the energy consumption and improving efficiencies, governance and sustainability, sustainability assessment and policies, and remote sensing for sustainable management of land and biodiversity. In this framework, studies concerning the sustainable use of forest and agriculture resources are welcome in the form of both specialized and interdisciplinary manuscripts. This Special Issue solicits theoretical, application-oriented, experimental, and real-world research to demonstrate the advances in the industrial applications toward sustainable management. This will also bring the opportunity to promote research trends of carbon neutral industry.

Prof. Dr. Teijo Palander
Dr. Kalle Kärhä
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainability
  • bio-economy
  • efficiency
  • sustainable development
  • environmental impact
  • industrial eco-innovation
  • corporate social responsibility
  • sustainable engineering and optimization
  • process control and monitoring
  • renewable energy systems and management

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 2758 KiB  
Article
A Causal Model of the Sustainable Use of Resources: A Case Study on a Woodworking Process
by Tomas Macak, Jan Hron and Jaromir Stusek
Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 9057; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219057 - 30 Oct 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2602
Abstract
Controlling the life cycle of natural resources, from extraction within the design and the production of products to handling waste, is crucial to green growth and is a part of advancing a resource-efficient, circular economy where everything is fully utilised. One way of [...] Read more.
Controlling the life cycle of natural resources, from extraction within the design and the production of products to handling waste, is crucial to green growth and is a part of advancing a resource-efficient, circular economy where everything is fully utilised. One way of using resources more efficiently for a greener economy is to design a production process that takes cost and energy savings into account. From this point of view, the goal of the article is to create a causal description of sustainable woodworking—especially using renewable and non-renewable resources—in relation to changes in the concentration levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. After estimating the partial parameters, this model can be used to predict or simulate different CO2 concentration levels in the atmosphere—for example, based on the ratio of renewable to non-renewable sources. After a theoretical description, the subsequent practical goal is to identify the optimal settings of wood-milling process parameters for either minimising energy consumption per workpiece and unit variable costs or for maximising the overall customer benefit. For this purpose, a complete factorial design was used, and based on this, the consumption energy (direct cost) optimisation of the production process was supplemented by a profitable production calculation. The effect of reducing variability was verified using a statistical F-test. The impact of minimising energy consumption (economically expressed as the mean profit) was then validated using a Student’s t-test. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in the Green Circular Economy: Forest and Agriculture Industry)
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24 pages, 4286 KiB  
Article
Mathematical Simulation of Forest Fire Impact on Industrial Facilities and Wood-Based Buildings
by Nikolay Baranovskiy and Aleksey Malinin
Sustainability 2020, 12(13), 5475; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12135475 - 7 Jul 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2726
Abstract
The present work is devoted to the theoretical study of heat transfer in the enclosing structures of a wooden building exposed to the front of a forest fire. In the general case, the following effects could be distinguished: The direct effect of a [...] Read more.
The present work is devoted to the theoretical study of heat transfer in the enclosing structures of a wooden building exposed to the front of a forest fire. In the general case, the following effects could be distinguished: The direct effect of a forest fire flame, the effect of convective and radiant heat flux, and the removal of firebrands from the front of a forest fire. In this paper, only building enclosures were considered to be exposed to radiant heat flux from the front of a forest fire. The scenarios of the impacts of low- and high-intensity surface forest fires and crown forest fires were considered, taking into account the parameterized structure of the fire front, as well as various cladding materials and the time of the forest fire. As a result of mathematical modeling, temperature distributions over the surface and thickness of the cladding material were obtained, and ignition conditions were determined based on experimental data. The proposed simplified mathematical model and the obtained results can be used in the practice of protecting industrial facilities or rural settlements from forest fires. Particular attention should be paid to the potential use of the results in the Information System for Remote Monitoring of Forest Fires, ISDM-Rosleskhoz, in conjunction with geo-information technologies and methods of remote monitoring. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in the Green Circular Economy: Forest and Agriculture Industry)
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23 pages, 1618 KiB  
Article
A Sequential Optimization Approach in Tactical Planning for Value Creation in the Forest Products Industry
by Baburam Rijal, Luc LeBel, Shuva H. Gautam and Pierre Cantegril
Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 4932; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12124932 - 17 Jun 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2416
Abstract
Strategic, tactical, and operation-level forest management plans are commonly formulated by forest planners following even-flow yield principles. Although strategic planning ensures a sustained supply of timber over the long term, it disregards individual mills’ requirements, which leads to discrepancy between supply and demand. [...] Read more.
Strategic, tactical, and operation-level forest management plans are commonly formulated by forest planners following even-flow yield principles. Although strategic planning ensures a sustained supply of timber over the long term, it disregards individual mills’ requirements, which leads to discrepancy between supply and demand. We hypothesize that a value-based timber allocation decision, which accounts for individual mills’ demands during tactical level planning, reduces such discrepancy by increasing value over the entire supply chain. Three types of linear programming models were constructed: Model A—status quo volume-maximization model, Model B—supply chain net present value-maximization (NPV) model, and Model C—a novel approach with sub-models embedded that maximize the NPV of individual mills in the allocation decision. Our results showed that only 58% of the annual allowable cut was profitable and the mean net revenue per harvested area was $2455 ha−1 using Model A. The respective values using Models B and C were 64% and $3890 ha−1 and 96% and $4040 ha−1, respectively, showing that Model C generated the highest net revenue for all mills. Such a method of value-based sequential optimization (Model C) will be crucial in sustainable use of forest products and sustaining future bioeconomy, particularly for managing mixed species stands that contain timber suitable for manufacturing a wide range of products with different market values. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in the Green Circular Economy: Forest and Agriculture Industry)
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22 pages, 4669 KiB  
Article
Comparison of Energy Efficiency Indicators of Road Transportation for Modeling Environmental Sustainability in “Green” Circular Industry
by Teijo Palander, Hanna Haavikko, Emma Kortelainen and Kalle Kärhä
Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 2740; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072740 - 31 Mar 2020
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 4144
Abstract
The Finnish forest industry is committed to applying novel technologies for increasing carbon-neutral development and environmental sustainability in “green” circular industry. This study compares the energy efficiency indicators of road freight transportation. Additionally, effects of four mass limits of vehicle combinations are analyzed [...] Read more.
The Finnish forest industry is committed to applying novel technologies for increasing carbon-neutral development and environmental sustainability in “green” circular industry. This study compares the energy efficiency indicators of road freight transportation. Additionally, effects of four mass limits of vehicle combinations are analyzed after a three-year adaptation process that took place in a wood procurement region of 100% renewable resources. The wood-based energy efficiency model (load’s wood energy/fossil transport energy) was the most accurate and precise measure as the development indicator. The indicator showed that the transportation systems (60, 64, 68, and 76 t) and (64, 68, and 76 t) were carbon negative (122, 133, 144, and 108) (142, 147, and 133) in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The numbers reveal positive energy ratio of renewable wood and fossil fuels. In comparison to 60 t, the use of 68 t vehicles increased energy efficiency most effectively in the systems, by 18.0% and 20.5%, respectively. The indicator robustly revealed the energy efficiency of a partial system in the smaller supply region, which depended on the region’s transportation conditions. This novel knowledge can be applied for advancing the adaptation toward carbon-neutral supply networks. There is also the development potential of an industrial ecosystem model for optimizing the environmental sustainability of “green” circular industry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in the Green Circular Economy: Forest and Agriculture Industry)
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