Abstract
Scarcity of fossil fuels and their emissions have led energy policymakers to look for alternative renewable and clean energy sources. In line with this target, biomass is a promising alternative source for the generation of clean energy and the development of a sustainable society. The use of animal and agricultural wastes is one of the very promising renewable energy alternatives paving the way for a more sustainable energy network. Animal and agricultural wastes as biomass sources do not endanger food security and mitigate environmental impacts and may therefore considerably contribute to an appropriate waste management. As a result, converting animal and agricultural wastes to energy is a challenging issue that has attracted the attention of academic and industrial researchers. A multi-echelon multi-objective model is developed to design a sustainable supply chain for bioenergy generation through the anaerobic digestion process. The model maximizes economic and social objective functions, representing direct economic profits and positive social externalities such as job creation and economic development, respectively. Factors affecting the international supply chain include imports of intermediate production equipment, exports of a final product, international business terms applied, customs duties, and foreign exchange rates. Bioenergy and fertilizers are outputs considered in this study; the former to be converted to electricity in a biogas plant to meet domestic demands, and the latter to be exported. A case study for the Golestan province is used to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model. The results support the potential for three biogas power plants in Gonbad-e-Kavoos, with an annual production capacity of about 1000 tons of fertilizer and an electricity supply for 101,556 households per month. There is still a broad field of promising avenues for future research. Studying uncertainty in different supply chain parameters and using robust optimization to deal with uncertainties are recommended approaches.
Highlights
Scarcity of fossil fuels, together with emission of fossil fuel pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere, and the resulting consequences, have led energy policymakers and planners to look for alternative renewable and clean energy sources
Different types of biomass may be categorized into three generations: the first generation is mainly composed of feed materials such as corn grain, sugar cane, soybeans, and oilseeds; the second generation includes such materials as agricultural wastes [1] such as corn pods, post-felling wastes, or non-edible energy specific products like switchgrass, miscanthus, and jatropha; and the third generation described as aquatic biomass, includes a diverse group of photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria, sized from microscopic to large seaweeds [2]
The Golestan province has been selected for the following reasons: (1) according to the reports, a high potential capacity of biogas production from biomass energy sources in Golestan is proven; (2) agriculture is the dominant economic sector in Golestan, a province that is home to production of many important and strategic products as well as animal husbandry products, due to the existence of susceptible agricultural waste; (3) due to the lack of enough infrastructures for transmission of electricity to the northern cities of the country and electricity imports from neighboring countries currently meet the power demand; (4) The Golestan province is geographically close to the international ports of northern Iran, paving the way for quick and easy equipment import and product export
Summary
Together with emission of fossil fuel pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere, and the resulting consequences, have led energy policymakers and planners to look for alternative renewable and clean energy sources. In order to efficiently transform biomass into energy, all supply chain network steps and activities should be designed in a way that guarantees the efficient flow of materials, information, and finance. Such activities include planting, harvesting, collecting, storing, and transporting the biomass, as well as converting biomass to energy, and the distribution and consumption of energy. To carry out these activities, there should be a supply chain configuration along with an efficient transportation network, an optimum spatial and capacity formulation of power plants and warehouses, a supply and management of resources, waste management, and operational scheduling
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