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Digital Twin to coordinate offsite collection, consolidation, and valorisation of salt and RO brine from meat processors, optimise hubs, routes, treatment; cut costs and emissions.
About
Masoud Khalilimoghad is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Urban Freight at the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, supported by an ARC Discovery Project. He holds a PhD in Transportation from the University of Melbourne and has developed deep technical expertise in freight network design, problem formulation, optimisation methodologies, and survey design. His core skills include hub-location modelling, vehicle routing, data-driven scheduling, and spatial data analysis; he combines these with strong programming and systems-integration experience to deliver production-ready optimisation engines and decision-support tools.
Masoud specialises in the design and implementation of Digital Twin platforms for logistics and resource recovery. During his doctoral studies and subsequent applied work, he led and contributed to interdisciplinary projects across transportation, mathematics, engineering, and information technology, collaborating closely with industry and government partners. Notable engagements include applied research with Australia Post and Transport for NSW (demonstrating up to 42% economic and 25% environmental cost reductions through optimised collection and siting), system development for Pacific National, and a proof-of-concept Digital Twin that examined Sustainable Development Goal interactions for the Commissioner for Sustainability, Victoria. These projects have proven his ability to translate mathematical models into operational systems and to negotiate the governance arrangements required for industry adoption.
Masoud’s research agenda addresses City Logistics and Physical Internet challenges with a strong emphasis on sustainability and circular-economy outcomes. He uses agent-based modelling, machine learning, and optimisation in tandem to design AI-informed policies that balance economic, operational, and environmental objectives for last-mile and industrial stakeholders. For the proposed Digital Twin for saline-waste valorisation, Masoud will lead a multidisciplinary team to operationalise consolidation-hub strategies, enable compliant reverse logistics for salt and brine, and validate commercial valorisation pathways through industry pilots, delivering measurable reductions in costs, vehicle-kilometres, and lifecycle emissions.
Key Benefits
The proposed Digital Twin for saline-waste valorisation will deliver the following key benefits:
- Material cost reduction for processors through optimised collection, consolidation and treatment allocation.
- Lower lifecycle emissions via route and hub-location optimisation and prioritisation of low-emission fleets.
- Reduced vehicle-kilometres travelled (VKT), fuel use and road-wear from shorter, consolidated haul routes.
- Increased recovery of value from salt and RO brine through organised aggregation and commercial valorisation pathways.
- Decreased disposal and compliance costs by replacing onsite evaporation/landfill with coordinated offsite treatment.
- Stronger regulatory compliance and auditability through end-to-end traceability, digital manifests and chain-of-custody records.
- Improved site operational capacity and land use by freeing land currently dedicated to evaporation ponds and onsite storage.
- Evidence-based decision making enabled by real-time monitoring, embedded analytics and scenario testing in the DT.
- Faster stakeholder coordination and market matching by linking processors, recyclers, treatment providers and end-users.
- Scalable, governance-ready solution that supports pilot-to-scale transition and commercial adoption.
- Measurable performance guarantees (tonnes recovered, disposal cost savings, landfill diversion, ROI and emissions reductions) for funders and industry partners.
Applications
The Digital Twin will be developed top-down, from strategic decision-making through tactical planning to operational execution. At the strategic level, the platform will support hub-location optimisation, commercial partnership design, and policy alignment by modelling regional consolidation scenarios and identifying candidate consolidation hubs. Specifically, the platform will link processors, third-party recyclers, treatment providers, and potential end-users in agriculture, construction, and industrial manufacturing to enable demand–supply matching and firm commercial off-take arrangements. This strategic layer will be co-designed with stakeholders to ensure horizontal collaboration among industry actors and vertical integration from site operators to regulators and government agencies.
At the tactical and operational levels, the Digital Twin will translate strategic outputs into executable schedules and real-time actions. The system will integrate site-level saline generation profiles, RO purge characteristics, treatment plant throughput, and fleet availability to produce data-driven scheduling, vehicle routing, and treatment allocation that minimise cost and emissions while maximising recovery. At the operational level, the DT will manage reverse logistics for both solid (recovered salt) and liquid (brine) streams, specifying compliant handling and transport procedures, digital chain-of-custody records, and options for low-emission fleet deployment. Role-based access, real-time monitoring, and embedded analytics will provide transparent performance reporting and operational control for all stakeholders.
Figure 1 maps red meat processors and existing saline treatment/recycling plants; the inset highlights the region of highest processor density. The map reveals a spatial mismatch that produces long inter-site haul distances for salt and RO brine, driving excessive heavy-vehicle movements, higher VKT, increased fuel use, emissions, and road wear, and complicating compliance. Implementing hub-location and collection optimisation via the proposed Digital Twin will identify consolidation hubs, shorten collection routes, enable third-party consolidation, and support low-emission reverse-logistics to materially reduce these environmental and economic impacts.