Water integration in eco-industrial parks using a multi-leader-follower approach

• To optimally design an eco-industrial park through multi-leader-follower game problems.
• Approach validated by water exchanges in several cases study.
• Introduction of an EIP authority that can guarantee lower environmental impacts.
• Each enterprise included in the EIP minimizes its cost.
• Nash equilibrium solution is proven to be efficient compared to traditional approaches.

The design and optimization of industrial water networks in eco-industrial parks are studied by formulating and solving multi-leader-follower game problems. The methodology is explained by demonstrating its advantages against multi-objective optimization approaches. Several formulations and solution methods for MLFG are discussed in detail. The approach is validated on a case study of water integration in EIP without and with regeneration units. In the latter, multi-leader-single-follower and single-leader-multi-follower games are studied. Each enterprise's objective is to minimize the total annualized cost, while the EIP authority objective is to minimize the consumption of freshwater within the ecopark. The MLFG is transformed into a MOPEC and solved using GAMS® as an NLP. Obtained results are compared against the MOO approach and between different MLFG formulations. The methodology proposed is proved to be very reliable in multi-criteria scenarios compared to MOO approaches, providing numerical Nash equilibrium solutions and specifically in EIP design and optimization.