An integrated approach to waste and energy minimization in the wine industry : a knowledge-based decision methodology

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The importance of waste management is growing rapidly for several reasons. Thesereasons include the escalating cost of wastewater treatment and cleaning chemicals, anemerging trend of onerous regulatory regime regarding e uent disposal from governments,rising public awareness on the adverse e ects of industrial waste as well as drastic reduc-tion in water resources in the winegrowing regions. In addition, owing to the large energydemand for refrigeration purposes for high quality wine production and rapidly increasingenergy costs, the challenges of energy management in the wine industry were also inves-tigated.In order to address these challenges adequately, the solutions were derived via theintegration of two disciplines: environmental science (waste and energy management)and computer science (applications of arti cial intelligence). Therefore, thendings re-ported from this study seek to advance knowledge through the construction of decisionsupport systems for waste and energy management in circumstances where conventionalmathematical formalisms are inadequate. In that sense, the dissertation constitutes in-terdisciplinary research on the application of integrated arti cial intelligence technologies(expert systems and fuzzy logic) in designing and developing decision tools for waste andenergy management in the wine industry.The dissertationrst presents the domain of interest, where the scope and breadth ofthe problems it addresses are clearly de ned. Critical examination of the domain data-bases revealed that data, information, and knowledge for waste and energy managementin the wine industry are generally incomplete and lack structure overall. Owing to thesecharacteristics, a hybrid system approach was proposed for the development of decisionsupport systems based on fuzzy logic. The integrated decision support systems were de-veloped based on an object-oriented architecture. This approach facilitated the exibledesign required for waste and energy management-related complex problem-solving.To illustrate the applicability of the o -line decision tools developed, several case stud-ies mirroring on actual industrial practices were considered. These systems were found tobe robust and yielded results that were in accordance with actual industrial practices inthe wine industry. Furthermore, they provided intelligent suggestions in scenarios wherethere was minimal information, and under certain instances they o ered feasible sugges-tions in circumstances where a human novice could have problems in making the rightdecisions.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University