۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review

۳- Methodology

۴- Results and discussion

۵- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Biomass is becoming an increasingly widespread source of energy. Yet land, as one of the most important resources in biomass production, is surprisingly understudied in the literature of biomass supply chain planning. This study proposes a novel framework that combines the literature of bioethanol supply chain design with agricultural land planning to simultaneously address optimal supply chain planning and sustainable land use in a bioethanol supply chain. A bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to formulate the optimal design and planning of a bioethanol supply chain network considering competition of food and biomass feedstock over the available croplands. The proposed model is capable of making strategic decisions (i.e. locations and capacities of facilities, sourcing and allocation of biomass feedstocks to biorefineries), along with some tactical decisions (i.e. land planning, inventory and production of both biomass feedstock and bioethanol). The model incorporates the two objectives of minimum cost and maximum suitability of crops with their assigned croplands. A novel integration of the FAO framework, the best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method, PROMETHEE II and GIS is used to determine the suitability of available croplands according to the croplands’ soil and topographical characteristics. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated through a multi-feedstock bioethanol supply chain in Fars province, Iran. It is concluded that the proposed integrated land planning-network design framework outperforms hierarchical approaches in which network design and land planning problems are solved separately in a sequential manner. Also, the case study shows that conditional on implementing second generation bioethanol production, Fars province has the potential to satisfy three percent of the fuel demand for transportation in the country.

Introduction

With the rapidly increasing energy demand and the destructive environmental implications of fossil fuel consumption, renewable energies (REs) play an important role in protecting the environment for the future. Among all the renewable energy resources, biofuel is very attractive due to its worldwide availability, storage potential, and the efficiency of its conversion technologies [1]. In the recent years, many studies have been conducted on its future contribution to the global energy demand [2,3]. Iran holds the largest natural gas and the fourth largest oil reserves in the world and is within the ten countries with the highest emissions of CO2 [4]. The country’s main primary energy resources include oil (fuel and crude), natural gas, electric power (generated mainly by natural gas, followed by fuel oil, gas/diesel, wind and Hydro), gas/diesel and motor gasoline [4,5]. As reported by Aslani et al. [6], transportation sector is the second most energy-intensive sector, following residential sector, in the country and is currently utilizing gasoline, gas/diesel, natural gas and fuel oil as its main energy resources [4]. Also, as reported by Mousavi et al. [4], transportation has produced the second largest amounts of carbon dioxide, again following residential, on average between 2003 and 2014. Biofuel is one of the few renewable energy resources which can contribute to satisfying the energy demand of the transportation sector [7]. Therefore, biofuel production could potentially play an important role in sustainability of energy consumption and meeting the increasing gasoline demand in the near future in Iran [8,9]. In addition, biofuel production contributes to waste management, specially the extensive agricultural waste produced annually in the country, produces jobs and promotes development specially in rural areas [10]. According to Ghobadian [11], only utilizing the 17.86 million tons of wasted crops in Iran, would be able to produce 4.91 billion liters of bioethanol per year.