Abstract
As the lignocellulosic biofuels industry is still developing, reducing operational and capital costs along the supply chain can increase the competitiveness of the final fuel price and investor willingness to commit funds. Capital cost savings may be realized through co-locating depots with active biomass processing plants, such as saw mills, and through repurposing existing industrial facilities, such as pulp mills, into a biorefinery. Operational cost savings may be gained through the selective siting of depots and biorefineries based on operational cost components that vary geospatially, such as energy rates and feedstock availability. Utilizing depots in a biofuel supply chain to procure and preprocess feedstock has additionally been found to mitigate supply risk in regions of low biomass availability, as well as reduce the biorefinery footprint. A multi-criteria decision support tool (DST) is developed utilized to assess existing industrial facilities for their potential role in a wood-based depot-and-biorefinery supply chain. Geospatial cost components are identified through techno-economic analyses for use as siting criteria for the depots and biorefinery. The “repurpose potential” of industrial facilities is assessed as a siting criterion for candidate biorefinery locations. A case study is presented in the Inland Northwest region of the United States to assess the usefulness of the tool in selecting industrial facilities for a configured depot-and-biorefinery supply chain. The results are compared against optimization runs of the candidate facilities to validate the depots selected by the DST. In two of the three supply chains, the DST selected the same or similar facilities as the optimization run for no net increase in annual cost. The third supply chain showed an approximately 1% increase in annual cost over the optimized facilities selected.
Highlights
Annual feedstock supply variability and significant upfront capital costs can affect investor willingness to commit funds for the construction and operation of cellulosic and advanced biorefineries (Coyle, 2010)
A case study is presented in the Inland Northwest region of the United States, and the results are compared against an optimization routine to determine how well facilities are selected by the decision support tool. Facility siting for both the depots and biorefinery is comprised of a series of steps (Figure 1) that center around two multicriteria decision matrices, one for the assignment of depots to each potential biorefinery and one for the selection of a final biorefinery location based on the depots + biorefinery configuration
Criteria are selected as geospatial metrics important in the siting of a biorefinery or depot, weights define the relative importance of each criterion, and scale values provide a means for assessing existing facilities against the design biorefinery case based on location-specific values relative to the range of regional values present
Summary
Annual feedstock supply variability and significant upfront capital costs can affect investor willingness to commit funds for the construction and operation of cellulosic and advanced biorefineries (Coyle, 2010). Operational cost savings may be gained through the selective siting of depots and biorefineries based on location-specific costs such as energy rates and delivered feedstock cost (Martinkus et al, 2017b). Prioritizing capital and operational cost savings during site selection can enable biorefineries and depots to be constructed with reduced financial risk. Still others (Ma et al, 2005; Sultana and Kumar, 2012) expand on the pixel approach by performing an exclusion analysis using rasterized layers to identify potential biomass-based facilities These approaches may be adequate when performing a scoping analysis for biorefinery siting as they broadly assume a suitable location can be found within the pixels or region identified as optimal. Strategic siting decisions must include considerations for location-specific cost variables to reduce capital and operational expenses
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
