Abstract
Using agricultural straw to generate electricity is an effective approach for relieving the pressure of procuring a reliable energy supply and reducing environmental pollution. Because the locations of the power plants have a significant impact on the supply of raw materials and the cost of transportation, it is important to choose reasonable locations for power plants. To solve the problem of straw-based power plant site selection (SPPSS), in this paper, a spatially explicit optimization model is proposed. Compared to the existing research, the present study makes the following major contributions: (1) The agricultural land quality evaluation dataset, combined with the cropping system and theoretical yield information, is used as the basic data to estimate agricultural straw yields, thereby increasing the accuracy of the straw yield and spatial distribution estimates. (2) Geographic information system (GIS) techniques are employed to improve an artificial immune system (AIS), which is an effective and flexible approach for solving optimization problems. The Chinese province of Hubei is selected as the experimental area to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The experimental results demonstrate that of the 34.89 million tons of agricultural straw produced in Hubei Province each year, 17.45 million tons can be used for electricity generation. The optimization schemes generated by the proposed model are feasible. Our results are expected to provide an important decision-making basis for straw-based power plant (SPP) development planning in Hubei Province.
Highlights
Over the past 30 years, with the increase in rural income and improvement in rural infrastructure, straw, the traditional fuel choice in rural regions in China, has gradually been replaced by fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas
To address the limitations of the existing research on straw-based power plant site selection (SPPSS), the present study proposes a spatially explicit optimal decision-making model for SPPSS using Geographic information system (GIS) spatial analysis methods, with an artificial immune system (AIS) optimization algorithm as the framework
To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, the straw-based power plant (SPP) development planning of Hubei Province is selected as the application setting of the proposed model, and SPPSS optimization for Hubei Province is investigated through experimentation based on the collected data
Summary
Over the past 30 years, with the increase in rural income and improvement in rural infrastructure, straw, the traditional fuel choice in rural regions in China, has gradually been replaced by fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. Using agricultural straw to generate electricity effectively reduces environmental stress and pollution, considerably improves the energy structure in rural regions, increases rural incomes, and promotes rural economic and social development. According to the relevant investigations and studies in China, compared to coal power, producing 1 kWh of electricity from straw would reduce CO2 by 669 g, SO2 by 7.77 g, NOx by 6.78 g, and ash emitted into the atmosphere by 13.34 g [4]. It has been found that a power plant consuming 200,000 tons of straw per year could create 1000 jobs [5]
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