Abstract:

Industrial Ecology (IE) is a recent field that offers appealing solutions for resources depletion and for implementing sustainable development in industry (Carrillo 2014). As IE implementation is still in a preliminary step, also IE learning experiences are not completely systematized. Important efforts have been developed by the Netherlands (Lemkowitz 2004), Norway (Hawkins 2009), Sweden (KTH 2014), USA (Eckelman 2011), among other countries, in terms of including IE in the curricula (mainly master studies) but few papers have been published in this field.

In this sense, it is important to systematize and publish learning experiences that help students in the way of comprehending and implementing IE. Working in a IE research project can be a very effective way of learning IE concepts and practices.

In this paper the experience developed by the Research Group in Industrial Ecology (GIEI) of Instituto Politecnico Nacional in México is described. Students learn how to apply IE working in a IE research project. Undergraduate students collaborate for 1 year in a research project and try to find how to apply IE to a process or system. Afterwards they get their degree in environmental engineering or biotechnological engineering through a thesis. The project chosen this year is the production of biodiesel from microalgae.

Results show that students comprehend the IE concept and know how to apply it either to a system or to a process. Regarding the production of biodiesel from microalgae they valorized wastes from the process and used them as raw material of other processes but they also looked for other global solutions, such as using renewable energy in the process.

The thesis developed by the students are usually qualified by the supervisors as excellent and of a high level.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The project was supported by a SENER-CONACYT project n.4627 and by a multidisciplinary SIP-1487

References:
[1] Carrillo, G (coord.) (2014), Ecología Industrial en México, México DF: Universidad Autónoma Metropitana.
[2] Matthew J. Eckelman, Reid J. Lifset, Ioannis Yessios, Ken Panko (2011), Teaching industrial ecology and environmental management in Second Life, Journal of Cleaner Production 19, 1273-1278.
[3] Troy R. Hawkins, Deanna H. Matthews (2009), A Classroom Simulation to Teach Economic Input−Output life Cycle Assessment, Journal of Industrial Ecology 13(4), 622-637.
[4] KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2014), available at: http://www.kth.se/en/itm/forskning/forskning-ima (accessed 2-04-2014).
[5] S.M. Lemkowitz, G.H. Lameris, E. van der Voet, I. Nikolic (2004), An Industrial Ecology Teaching Approach Suitable to All University Students, International Conference on Engineering Education in Sustainable Development EESD2004, CIMNE and UPC, Barcelona 2004.

Keywords:

Industrial Ecology, Learning, Research, Biodiesel.