Sharif Digital Repository

Petroleum industry, as the most important industry in our country, can play a key role in economic development. Iran as an important producer of oil and gas, consume only little amount of its production and the remaining is being exported. This industry has a four echelon supply chain. 1) Crude oil and gas, 2) refinery 3) petrochemical and 4) downstream petrochemical. The upper echelon creates little value-added but the production volume is much more than that of downstream. But the main issue is that the most significant economic value added is produced in downstream. Each industry has its own type of product that can be sold, or consume in the next industry to produce a more expensive... 

In the present work, a comprehensive economic, environmental and exergy analysis and multi-objective optimization for gas sweetening plant are provided and the interaction between decision variables in these criterions is discussed. In the first part, potentials of three environmental features (global warming, acid rain, smog formation) of the operational plant are quantified and normalized using life cycle assessment (LCA) for both process waste and utility environmental impacts.Acid rain index is determined as the most important environmental impactindex in this unit. By choosing proper decision variables based on sensitivity analysis, LCA and EA results, optimization is performed to... 

In the present work, a comprehensive economic, environmental and dynamic behavior analysis with multi-objective optimization for the unit 400 of BandarEmam aromatic plant are provided and the interaction between decision variables in these criterions is discussed. In the first part, potential of seven environmental features of the operational plant are qualified and normalized using life cycle assessement (LCA) for both process waste and utility environmental impacts. By choosing the number of trays and feed stage in three distillation columns as decision variables, optimization is performed to determine the best structural variables values based on the total annual cost and Environmental... 

Pre-fabrication of building components, as a level of industrial building, is an innovative method of construction, which is widely used in developed countries nowadays. However, this method has accounted for a small percentage of the construction in developing countries like Iran. On the other hand, it is essential to consider sustainable development with the incidence of issues such as degradation of natural resources and ecosystems, pollution, over population, injustice procedure, and decrease in quality of human life. Industrial building systems have a significant impact on improvement and expansion of sustainable development laws due to their potential characteristics. Hence, the... 

Increasing aviation share in air pollution, population growth, scarcity of available resources such as land (airport), airspace and energy along with uncertainties in air transportation demand and energy market, has motivated the industry stakeholders to push researches toward sustainable models in fleet planning and design. In this thesis we have investigated the suitability of a decision-making model for airline fleet management, based on “Game Theory” and the idea of commercial formation flight (COFOFS). We intend to examine the circumstances under which, an airline needs to substitute a wide-body aircraft with number of smaller ones, while employing the approach of formation flight.... 

The objective of this research is to develop a mathematical model for analysis and design of airport cities. In this model, the interactions among the elements of an airport city -regarded as a complex system- will be analyzed, and the impact of the stakeholders’ requirements on the functional and physical architecture of the airport city will be investigated. So as the first step, the stakeholders of the system and their requirements are identified and classified. Second, the concept of operation of the airport city is investigated, and then the architecture of the system is modeled as a queuing network. So that each element of the airport city is regarded as a service center, including the... 

The design and optimization of processes was focused in the past on economic issues such as profitability and return on investment, and less attention has been paid to environmental issues. In recent years, by introducing environmental criterion as pillars of sustainable development, environmental optimization of processes has becoming an inseparable element of the process engineering. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the compatibility of environmental indicators with economic objective. The purpose of this study is to investigate environmental indicators and economic objective function in optimizing the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) of an oil refinery. The CDU is one of the most... 

Conservation of water and protection of water resources is considered as an important and fundamental element in sustainable development. In the southern regions of our country, access to fresh water is very difficult and it is very costly to supply. In Kish Island with an area of approximately 9000 Ha, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) is very important in terms of water supply and the environment and the natural ecosystem. Due to the confined and limited water resources available, and its reducing per capita, IWRM will become more important. In this regard,the Island's water resources (conventional and unconventional) need to be analyzed. Water systems can be modeled using... 

One of the ways to solve the problem of water scarcity in the agricultural sector is the development of the greenhouse. Using greenhouse and control of its internal conditions can increase productivity and reduce water consumption. But the issue that needs to be noted is higher energy consumption in greenhouses in comparison to traditional agriculture. The purpose of the present research is to evaluate the various technologies of supplying water and energy with a view to the climate, type of equipment and economic parameters. An analytical tool for designing and operation of the greenhouse have been developed and presented that may be applied in greenhouse sector. It is possible to evaluate... 

In the present work, a comprehensive economic, environmental and exergy analysis and multi-objective optimization for world’s largest aromatic plant are provided and the interaction between decision variables in these criterions is discussed. In the first part, potentials of seven environmental features of the operational plant are quantified and normalized using life cycle assessment (LCA) for both process waste and utility environmental impacts. Exergy analysis (EA) is also used to determine the lowest eco-efficiency equipment. By choosing proper decision variables based on sensitivity analysis, LCA and EA results, optimization is performed to determine the best design variables based on... 

Energy is a production factor and its availability and accessibility contributes to the improvement of the social welfare. Sustainable supply of energy is a prerequisite to the social and economical development. Over-exploitation of exhaustible energy resources along with the destruction caused by human activities has caused the environmental degradation. Therefore sustainable economic growth and improvement of the social welfare depend upon efficient supply of energy which ought to be compatible with the environment. Sustainable development is a concept which depicts a compromise between three aspects of development which are economical, social and environmental compatibility.
The... 

Limited water resources in Iran have made dams an important part of the country’s infrastructure. As a result of the large number of in-progress and expected dam projects in the country, consideration of sustainability factors during planning, construction and operation phases of dam projects can create significant economical, social and environmental impacts in the long term. To come up with an inclusive sustainable development, new sustainability assessment approaches seek for sustainable development at the entire project’s life-cycle; they are looking for sustainable development at all design, construction, operation, maintenance and even demolition phases. In this research we have... 

Damming projects always have been important while construction, operation and even demolition due to their major effects on society, environment and economy. Although researchers have focused on one or a few phases of construction projects to develop sustainable infrastructures, the research community has to consider long term effects of developments too. There are a variety of such effects that ignoring them will cause construction of not convenient infrastructures i.e. air pollution and over-consumption of energy resources while construction, operation and demolition. Therefore, it is suggested to consider life cycle assessments to include all bad effects in all phases of a project. Dams... 

Today, energy has a great impact on the economy, political relations, prosperity, and lifestyle of human societies. Energy sustainable development has become inevitable because of factors such as increasing population growth and as a result, increasing the energy consumption, consuming more energy from fossil fuels, decreasing in reserves of fossil fuel resources, environmental damage caused by the burning down of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions,high cost of energy from burning fossil fuels.Generally, the sustainable development isall steps in order to comply with economic development and protecting the environment, resources and living standards. Considering that a large part of... 

Sustainable development of the energy sector, as a resource-consuming sector with high environmental emissions, is essential. Especially in energy-intensive countries such as Iran with a sensitive environment, the sustainability considerations are more critical. The sustainability may be achieved when all pillars (economic, social, and environmental) are considered in a balanced manner. Previous economic experiences show the incapability of the market view in proper consideration of the ecosystem assets. Therefore, and in contrast to the economic view, in the physical approaches the limited capacity of the cosystem bounds the economic activities for meeting social welfare. In this view, the... 

Nowadays, every society tries to adjust its development’s orientation towards sustainable development. Construction projects have a significant share of every country’s economy. Construction waste management is one of the most important issues affecting sustainability. Construction waste management and waste minimization programs in construction projects not only can save resources and help the economy, but also can enhance a country’s development toward sustainable development. Designing process can be an effective phase in waste management among different stages of a project life cycle. Considering the significant number of concrete building constructions in Iran, the aim of this research... 

Moving towards a sustainable energy system in the evolving society requires the utilization of new applications like Electrical Vehicles (EVs) and integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) which will make new challenges for today’s power grids. To address these challenges, it is essential for emerging demand control paradigm to not only adapt the required demand with available supply but also consider the comfort and the level of lifestyle each customer may have in practice. In this research, due to the ever-growing interconnectivity of the grids, a distributed Commodity Market (CM) framework is proposed in which intelligent agents embedded in Demand Control Entity (DCE) units in... 

The main objective of this research is to provide a framework by which decision-makers can evaluate and compare alternatives for sustainable development planning under uncertain dynamic future considering the risk and uncertainty associated with human judgment as well as the uncertain future. This approach combines the Delphi method, fuzzy set theory, and a discrete multi-criteria method based on prospect theory (TODIM). TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for iterative MCDM) method is a particular multi-criteria approach based on the prospect theory. A qualitative Delphi technique is used to identify a set of qualitative sustainability criteria and to rate the alternatives accordingly. The... 

Urban transportation is one of the key parameters and indicators that determine the sustainable development of the city, in other words, to understand and evaluate the sustainability of a city, its transportation system must be considered. Bicycles can be considered the most sustainable means of urban transportation not only for short trips but also for medium trips.Urban bike networks in major cities are being systematically serviced and, like any other system to manage this volume of events, are facing challenges that we aim to improve one of the major costs of this system. The biggest challenge we face on this network is the imbalance between Inbound and outbound bicycles at different... 

There's a significant growth in sustainability reporting among top companies around the world in which based on KPMG report in 2017, 93 percent of 250 world's top companies have released their annual report in this field and this much attention to the reporting is a sign of special importance for and emphasizes on the necessity of corporate social responsibility in organizations. Since before doing the thesis there was no official statistics of sustainability reporting among Iranian companies, the research gap has been determined and by studying 100 Iranian top companies based on Industrial Management Institute ranking in 2017, we understood only 6 percent of these companies have already...