If renewable energy and biofuels are to attain success in the market place, each
step of their production and the system as a whole must be optimized to increase
material and energy efficiency, reduce production cost and create a competitive
alternative to fossil fuels. Systems optimization techniques may be applied to product
selection, process design and integration, feedstock procurement and supply chain
management to improve performance. This work addresses two problems facing a
biorefinery: technology selection and feedstock scheduling in the face of varying
feedstock supply and cost. Also addressed is the optimization of a biorefinery supply
chain with respect to distributed processing of biomass to bio-products via preprocessing
hubs versus centralized processing and facility location selection. Two formulations are
proposed that present a systematic approach to address each problem. Case studies are
included to demonstrate model capabilities for both formulations. The scheduling model
results display model sensitivity to feedstock price and transport distance penalized
through carbon dioxide emissions. The distributed model shows that hubs may be used
to extend the operating radius of a biorefinery and thereby increase profits.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-12-8768 |
| Date | 2010 December 1900 |
| Creators | Bowling, Ian Michael |
| Contributors | El-Halwagi, Mahmoud M. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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