Integrated Energy-Material-Carbon Flows Modeling and Scheduling Optimization for Discrete Manufacturing Processes

Abstract

With the rapid development of renewable energy and carbon accounting across industrial sectors, enhancing demand response capabilities and quantifying emissions have become critical for the decarbonization of production processes. However, production lines typically exhibit complex couplings among energy, material, and carbon flows, characterized by hybrid discrete-continuous dynamics. Current research still lacks a generalized model for collaborative scheduling optimization. This paper proposes a collaborative scheduling framework with unified energy and material flow (EMF) matrices modeling, and reveals the impact of energy-material coupling and flexible production plans on scheduling performance. Additionally, the carbon flow model is developed by defining material carbon intensity and calculating product carbon emission flow rates. The mechanisms of carbon transmission within the EMF network are revealed to quantify product carbon footprints and allocate carbon responsibility. The carbon intensity of all nodes is quantified to provide systematic insights for industrial sustainability. Based on this framework, a collaborative rescheduling strategy is applied to an air conditioning production line, aiming to minimize costs and emissions within a sustainable energy market and multi-class workpieces across metal fabrication, injection molding, and components assembly processes. Furthermore, the integrated flexibility from collaboration and adaptive production plan is illustrated through the convex formation of the projected feasible region. The results indicate a 15.9% reduction in energy costs and an 8.2% decrease in carbon emissions, while demonstrating that the flexible system integration enhanced peak shaving capacity by 18.38%.

Keywords: integrated energy system, clean production, carbon emission flow, scheduling optimization